What have you been reading, hearing or TV viewing that has provoked some feelings of comfort or concern about what is happening in the world of medicine, medical care, treatment or science? Ethics is all about doing the right thing. Are you aware of any issues in medicine or biologic science which are being done right, could be improved or in fact represent totally unethical behavior?
Write about them here.. and I will too! ..Maurice (DoktorMo@aol.com)

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Thursday, June 30, 2005

“I Hate Doctors”

A visitor came today to my blog from Google with the search words “I hate doctors”. While, I don’t know the true motivation and concern of this visitor, I think that this visitor’s search terms are consistent with the ambivalent feeling people have about doctors. Whether it is fair to characterize this ambivalence in the extremes of “love” and “hate” or some more moderate terms can be considered but obviously the ambivalence is a realistic phenomenon.

Why are we loved? Is it because, even if we cannot always meet the patient’s desires, we have a potential of bringing hope to the patient? Is it because most of us radiate a feeling of care and understanding? Patients may start out shaking our hands but there are times later on in the relationship when they actually hug us. Why are they doing that? Is it to show we really are connected emotionally and spiritually?

Why are we hated? Is it because we are the ones who find the bad spots in the patient’s body and give the bad news? Is it because some of us don’t live up to the patient’s expectations either in competency, thoughtfulness or concern? Is it because some of us still exude a paternalistic smell in a consumer and patient autonomous atmosphere?

Why are we both loved and hated? Is it because each patient, their condition and their experience both with illness and doctors are different? Is it because doctors are human and have their ups and down cognitively and emotionally and this may vary their appearance towards the patient?

To whatever degree we are either loved, hated or both, here is the takeaway message: this response of our patients should be a marker that we should not ignore. By paying attention to the patient’s words and behavior toward us as a kind of feedback regarding our own words and behavior, we may learn about our practice and ourselves and perhaps improve. We all remember being graded in residency, medical school and earlier by our teachers. Now as we practice medicine, we should remember we are still being graded but by our patients and their families and be prepared to learn from it. ..Maurice.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: AS OF DECEMBER 22 2008 THIS THREAD WILL BE CLOSED FOR ALL COMMENTS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WRITE ANY FURTHER COMMENTS HERE. PLEASE GO TO "I HATE DOCTORS":CHAPTER 2 TO CONTINUE COMMENTS. ..Maurice.

188 Comments:

I hate doctors because they do not care about what happens to their patients, they do not listen to their patients, they pretend they are better than their patients, and they do not care about their patients' concerns. It is really difficult to feel any kind of respect for someone like that. I am going to be a paralegal and I plan on specializing in medical malpractice because of the way I have been treated repeatedly by doctors and their staff. Doctors who actually CARE and don't talk down to their patients and can actually HELP patients in a meaningful way are extremely rare and unusual. I have never met a doctor who thought of his or her interaction with a patient as feedback or a reflection on them in any way. I do believe they should be grateful for every complaint filed against them--it is a wake up call and gives them some humility; in fact, it actually makes them more humane since they are, in essence, heartless, soulless, cold, calculating creatures. Maybe in some utopia, the situation that health care is in right now can be different, but I doubt it.

Maybe it would be more constructive if the law profession should keep an open mind about the behavior of any particular doctor as doctors should not pre-judge any particular lawyer. Even jokes about the professions may not do a good. Doctor jokes by lawyers and lawyer jokes by doctors are not particularly helpful in making better either profession. ..Maurice.

I have been wrestling with the: "It's not a perfect Science" do nothings for over 20 years. I can not express how much I hate Doctors. The only time I will see one is when I am absolutely forced too, and only when someone else will pay the bill. Every illness I have ever suffered cost me thousands of dollars in tests and Doctor visits and the results are ususally, bouncing from one speacialist to another at the cost of thousands more. In the end, it is always some well known disease that any first year medical student could have diagnosed it 30 seconds.

My last visit to an emergency roon with chest pain proved to be yet another experience in futility. Oh Gee, the Doctor said, I do not now what to make of all these symtoms your having,.. oh my,... I am not your Doctor and I really dont want to get involved. My Doctors away on Vacation, I said, I can not get a hold of him, his office said to come here to the emergency. Oh, well I will just prescribe you pain medication, which ususally means, I like making the big paycheck, but I dont give a danm.

Next day I suffered a Major Heart attack. I hate the prima donnas. I wish for them what they have done to me. lazy apathetic bastards.

I can't stand the way that physicians use the title of "doctor" to put themselves above the rest of us. First names seem to be good enough for the vast majority of adults, and I'm fed to the teeth with the way that physicians, and their staffs, always seem to try to cajole the rest of us into calling them and addressing them by a title. Professionalism has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Medical Malpractice has also done a lot of damage to my family. My sister was a DES baby, and that's just for starters. Both of my kids have chronic problems that they quite likely would not have if it hadn't been for really bad medical advice.

Boy, do I hate doctors! Starting with 20 years ago when my OB/GYN who was supposedly trying to help me get pregnant, left me sitting in the waiting room with sperm inside me for over an hour. Then he laughed at me when I experienced horrible pain during a test he claimed would not be painful. when he couldn't figure out what was wrong, he washed his hands of me! Now it it a rheumatologist who claims she can tell what is wrong with me just by looking, my family doctor who gets insulted and defensive if I ask for a referral, the voices who make the appointments who insist that you tell them the "entire" scope of your problem instead of just a general discription. Some of this stuff is intimate and personal and I don't feel comfortable discussing it with a stranger over the phone. The list just goes on and on. I am frustrated, angry, demeaned and in pain.

I hate doctors. I just finally decided this today; I've been on the fence and frustrated for a long time. Now I officially hate them.

I'm reasonably healthy, but I have mild but worstening asthma. I also have had a bum shoulder, and a bad reaction to a steroid shot in the shoulder.

I'm an intelligent woman who tries to figure out what's going on with my health. I occasionally even surf the internet for possible explanations. Doctor's hate well-informed women who ask questions. If I ask, "could it be xyz?", they look at me in a perterbed manner. I don't think if I were a guy, I'd be looked at sideways for having a clue as to what illnesses could cause my symptoms.

I think all doctors think I'm nuts. No one else thinks I'm nuts; just doctors. I've been told by many a person that I'm a very smart lady. But doctors just look perterbed with me for having a brain of my own and trying to participate in my own care.

When doctor's don't know what's wrong with you, they tell you it's in your head. I was told this (literally!) when I told my doctor that I had excrutiating pain in my hand whenever I bump my fingers. I immediately switched doctors, but it was still 10 years of being blown off by my new doc until I insisted on seeing a specialist. Bottom line was that the pain was caused by glomous tumors; it was not "in my head", it was in my fingernail beds.

A friend of mine was told it was just depression when she lost 20 pounds in 6 weeks, shortly after a separation from her husband. But to make a long story short, it turned out to be a parasite.

Today was the day I decided I hate them. After years of getting poor asthma care (always a different doc; no one who knows my history), I switched to a very well respected and well known hospital in Boston. I switched because I was hoping for more continuity in care, and also hoping for a specialist to examine me. After giving the new doc my history, she asked if I'd like to increase my meds. I said, "well, it's not my first choice, unless it's absolutely necessary." She looked at me perterbed and asked, "Then why did you come here?" I had to tell her again that I came in search of a better treatment facility, for consistency in care, to build a relationship with a doc, and to feel like I got some reassurance about my condition. Is that a lot to ask? Apparently so.

I give up. I know doctors are necessary evils, but they are evil I've decided. Well, maybe not evil, but very condescending with superior attitudes most of the time. I have decided to avoid them as much as possible. I just hope my health doesn't pay the price.

Exactly what was the "xyz" you suggested? And which symptoms were you associating with "xyz?" While the net has been a great help in medical education, there are multiple pitfalls in its use in this area. One of which is the tendency of medical sites to display a limited number of possible diseases known to result in a particular set of symptoms, with little or no explanation of the biological basis of how the symptoms are created and which organ systems may contribute.

After reading on some website that prostate cancer can metastasize to bones, a man with a sore finger may think he has an undiagnosed rampant prostate cancer, forgetting that he carried a bag of groceries with one finger the day before.

Perhaps your doctors looked perturbed because "xyz" falls very low on a carefully constructed differential diagnosis. I'm not saying that is the case, but this is a scenerio that is not that uncommon.This is why we sacrifice our best years studying basic biomedical and clinical sciences. Your body only has so many ways to tell you it's sick, so a headache or swollen lymph node may arise from any of a number of disease processes, and it's our business to get to the root of it.

When the "Check Engine" light comes on, do you spend weeks on the WWW reading about all the ways an engine can fail, or do you take your car to a mechanic with an intimate knowledge of auto mechanics?

Regarding doctors hating well-informed women, well, I can only say I have not seen this for myself. Perhaps you have been unfortunate to see only bigoted physicians, or maybe it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you truly believe this to be the case, it may be in your best interest to seek out female physicians, so you will avoid similar situations.

You mention always seeing a new doctor for your asthma. When you go to someone who has no knowledge of your medical history, he or she has to start from square one, including considering possibilities that your previous providers have ruled out. Asthma can be very troublesome to its sufferers, as I'm sure I don't need to tell you, but it is also challenging for the physician since each patient's case is unique to that individual. It is unreasonable for either the patient or the physician to expect complete control after one office visit.

Am I right in understanding that your final straw in deciding to hate doctors was your visit with a new physician who you believed to be insensitive? Her remark, "then why did you come here?" was certainly not worded appropriately and understandably could be offensive. I wonder, how did she respond when you told her your reasons for the visit?

What about the provider who diagnosed the tumors in your nail beds? Do you also hate him/her? It's concerning when one pre-judges the many based on the few, as they are likely to enter future doctor-patient relationships with negative expectations, and likely not be disappointed.

I am sorry that I cannot give you 100 examples of why doctors are great, or relate countless patients whose lives have been made better with the help of their physicians. I am only a lowly medical student myself, and simply do not have the experience in the "real world" to share. I can tell you, though, that there has been a paradigm shift in medical education. My colleagues and I do not consider it taboo for the patient to be involved in his or her own care. We consider it essential. Do I consider myself superior to anyone without an MD behind their name (nevermind that I won't have mine for another 2 years)? Certainly not. Am I in this field because I truly want to help make whole again the patient whose life has been shattered by disease? Absolutely.

I am sorry that you have had bad experiences with physicians. In every industry there exists a subset of people who are ill-suited, and medicine is certainly no exception. I hope you will consider, though, that the majority of us do have the patient's best interests at heart.

J, you, as a medical student, made the response to the previous post that I would have made. On the other hand, I can clearly see the origins of the negative feelings some patients hold toward their physicians. And these expressions of "hate" are really symptoms of a system failure which can in some ways be fixed.

The underlying issue is that of the fear of most people about being sick or dying. When they come to their physician ill, they are often troubled by this and are particularly sensitive to what their physician says or does.One system problem is that society doesn't realistically know what to expect from their doctors. There are too many articles and TV programs and commercials which promote these unrealistic expectations in terms of results of treatment and behavior of physicians. Realistic expectations, instead, should be emphasized.

Another system failure is that there are avoidable diagnostic and therapeutic mistakes in medicine. These should be identified and steps taken to promote prevention.

I would say that poor physician behavior is another system problem since I think there is more involved than just the innate personality of the physician. There should be better screening of students before entering medical school. And once admitted, there should be more careful scrutiny of behaviors which would indicate trouble in later years. If steps taken to provide mitigation fail, the students should be dismissed from continuing education as a physician.This is the responsibility of the medical school and their faculty.In addition, there should be more attention to the teaching of principles of professionalism, ethics and ways of good communication both to medical students in the early years but also in their later clerkships and later as interns and residents. So-called mentors of the students who themselves don't demonstrate professional behavior should not be allowed to teach.

Finally, in practice, the medical system should be rearranged so that physicians have more time to spend with their patients, have more time to think what they are doing and saying and get adequate income to make up for the reduced number of patients.

Fixing the system fully may be wishful thinking but I think it could help make physician visits by the patient more warm and acceptable. But there is still one more factor that should be emphasised and that is the responsibility of the patient, if practical and possible, to do "doctor shopping". What I mean is for the person to visit doctors while well, talk with them and try to select a physician which the person feels he or she would be most comfortable with when sick. I think that this is a very important thing for the patient to do if the patient wants a more satisfactory relationship to develop.

I hate Pediatricians, OBGYN's and any General Practice family doctor that says: "I circumcise but I don't necessarily agree that it is in the child's best interest".

If this is not a blatantly vulger thing to say & do then i don't know what else is. Basically you as a doctor, are ignoring the AAP policy statement that says RIC is not recommended on an otherwise healthy child, for what good medical reasons exactly?

Do you always do what your patients ask? If you really feel uncomfortable with this procedure do you not have the power to say NO when you feel something is wrong in your gut? I suspect if you took the time (ha ha) to actually educate your patients about why Routine infant circumcision (RIC) is harmful, you might be surprised to see that you wouldn't lose as many patients as you think.

But maybe it's a "wee bit" more difficult to say NO to them when you are profiting so nicely on it. SICK, SICK. SICK. By the way, the problem is made worse by Jewish doctors (who also circ. for a living) and impose their religion on every member of society.

Although I have been a patient of a pretty awful doctor and in fact have still not found a doctor that i feel actually cares. For me it would be the employee side of the coin that has really pissed me off. I work for a couple of doctors and couldnt agree more that they belittle you take out thier fustrations and thats why i hate doctors. Maybe I am pin pointing it to much on the proffession maybe I should be saying that I hate my boss,but it is funny that i have never had a problem before with other employeers. Im sure their probably is a good doctor out thier somewhere or maybe the movie patch adams is the closest well ever get to that, who knows. And of course i have respect for the work that goes into becoming a doctor but no respect for the doctors who dont then take the responibility of caring about thier patients, but then again its just an opinion.

I hate Doctors, because as mentioned previously they, for the most part, are arrogant jerks. Mostly I hate male OBGYNs, they are incredibly disturbing individuals, who were perverts in the first place to get into that field. I don't need some idiot man telling me what my cervix is, when I am QUITE aware of what and where it is and don't need some guy who read it in a book to tell me about it. Considering I experience the female body on a daily basis and am well educated about it, I am sure I am slightly more informed than a man who could pass a test to get a PhD.

I will broaden my response to hating the entire medical establishment. I speak from the experience of having worked in healthcare for the last 17 years and as a patient who survived a horrible rare complication of a VERY commonplace medical procedure. I would like to know how some of these people sleep at night? My problem was a shattered kidney. For which I was accused of drug-seeking! (That ER doc didnt even BOTHER to check the turkey file, as I had never been seen there!)Then my doc- oh which by the way, I used to be his check out secretary- sat on me as I bled thru a shattered renal artery- pumped 28 units of blood product into my arm over the course of 72 hours and had me shipped off elsewhere! I was placed in a medically induced coma and intubated for twelve days!When I woke up fourteen days later-he calls me, orders me to get booked for the same procedure on the SAME kidney- and then has the nerve to get angry at ME for not wanting to do it! To this day, my kidney is dying off and as it does, it is elongating. Eventually it will tear, so I am told by RN"s. The doctors I have seen have NEVER given me an explanation for this and not a one will even consider treating me! I am 37 and I will probably die from this.I have been turned down from every urologist and nephrologist I have seen. Their excuses usually run from "Oh, well Dr. sO and so is a close personal friend of mine" to "it will leave a big ugly scar!" Not only can I not get care, but I can no longer find work either. EACH and every job interview I have been on since this happened has fallen through. They took my health, they took my ability to earn a paycheck and support my family and they are probably going to take my life too.

I will die before I ever set foot in any doctors office again! I hate you all. You killed my wife.Your life depends on the misfortune of others! Your very excistence depends on the bad fortune pf others. You are buzzards. I hope all doctors and their familys get cancer and die!Burn in hell doictoirs!

To the last Anonymous.. hmmn.. all I can say to that is: "Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them you're a mile away and you have their shoes." ..Maurice.

I hate doctors!!!! All they want is your money and the ability to violate you. For the past few months, all I have seen in the papers is how there are phoney doctors out there who only want to see a woman's private areas. The last time a nurse tried to remove my clothing, I "accidentally" kicked them in the face. They have no business being there unless I say so, and trust me, I will never say so. Doctors are terrible people!!!

There are good and bad in every profession. My bad experiences were from one doctor who treated my domestic abuse injuries. Basically he told me "You must enjoy being slapped around." That does not help. In fact I walked out crying. On the other side of the coin I also had a surgeon who was really compassionate and supportive. Without his help I might not be here today.

I realize doctors have bad days like anyone else but I also think they need to treat patients with respect.

I don’t hate all physicians. I have had some that are caring and professional. Having said that, my husband has had the misfortune of being cared for by one of the most arrogant, narcissistic and patronizing physicians I have ever met. At one point, when my husband made an appointment to discuss some concerns he had over complications stemming from surgery this doctor had performed. The physician told him he should be happy that he was cancer free. My husband assured him that he was, but that he was concerned about strictures from the surgery, which had left him unable to urinate and for which he had to catheterize himself on a daily basis. After a while, my husband started to urinate on his own and the doctor told him it was because my husband had just, “forgotten how to pee and now he remembered!” What’s up with that? The last time he saw him he spent what little time my husband had in the appointment slot talking about the Foreign car he was thinking of buying. My husband started to say something and he cut him off and told him. “Men like you can’t afford those!” I was furious! My husband owned a car like that when this jerk was in grade school! I guess because my husband doesn’t paste the alphabet soup of his degrees on his forehead, the doctor considers him an idiot. We’re searching for another physician! Not all physicians are like this, but I agree with you that medical schools should weed people like this out, or at least allow them to spend three days in a hospital bed playing at being the patient!

The reason i hate doctor's is that when it comes to medication it seems to me that we are treated like guinea pigs. That's all we are people GUINEA PIGS!, so next time your GP puts you on some NEW medication it's not that he is concerned that the previous drug didn't work,but more importantly he or she want's to test the new one on as may people as possible, e.g i wonder how good this drug is?

I have been a doctor for only a few years. I came into the profession with such hopes of making a difference, but now I just wish I could turn back the clock and do something else with my life. I spent many years of my life studying and doing without so that I could get an education and "help people". Most doctors come out of school owing over $100,000, so we are forced to continue in this career even though there are some days I consider walking off cliff before I have to go into work and face the public. There are few options of second careers that allow us to pay off that kind of debt. There is no way to make the public happy with their healthcare. As stated in another response, they watch ER and House and expect their doctors to be miracle workers. They refuse to take responsibility for their own health. They refuse to accept that bad things happen to people and it is not necessarily someone's "fault". People die, there are always things that could have been done better.. I am not saying that mistakes are not made, they are..but we are HUMAN. If you don't like your doctor get another opinion--Take some freakin responsibility for yourself. If you don't understand ASK A QUESTION. We are not mind readers. If you are not getting better FOLLOW UP. People complain about healthcare bills--you know why they are high--Doctors are covering their ass. I live under the constant threat of being sued. Sure I've made mistakes, I try very hard to learn from them. I know I will make more mistakes--that is human nature. All I can do is try my hardest. As far as people being guinea pigs--don't take the medicine if you don't want to . All medicine has side effects--Even "all natural", "herbal" remedies. (Heroin is "all natural") I don't TEST drugs on people--give me a break. That doesn't even deseve a response. All I can say is IF YOU ARE THINKING OF GOING TO MEDICAL SCHOOL--UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE SHOULD YOU DO IT. Also, why is someone mad at doctors for what FAKE doctors do? (see comment from May 4th) That is the kind of nonsense that makes me want to cry. They are NOT doctors, so don't blame us for that too. And kicking a nurse--boy that just really makes me want to help you--maybe doctors are mean to you because you are abusing their staff. I am terrible? I don't want to stick my face in your crotch either--Believe me--NONE of them smell good. You have the right to refuse an exam, you have the right to not go to the doctor--ITS YOUR CHOICE. Once again--take responsibility for yourself.

I fully agree that patients should also take responsibility for themselves. Society has demanded that physician paternalism of the past be deminished and that there should be patient autonomy. This means that the doctor-patient relationship should at a minimum be the two parties working together as a team, each with their own contributions. The physician provides the capacity to diagnose and offer and educate treatment possibilities to the patient and the patient has the historical information for the physician and the knowledge of their own values and what they consider their goals as to quality of life. Therefore both supply their own elements into the therapeutic relationship. The patient must also be responsible for the final selection of a doctor, to monitor the doctor for comfort and compatability, to take the time and interest to learn about their illness with the help of the physician, to make the decisions of the possiblities in tests and treatments based on risk and benefit which is provided by the physician and finally to be complient with the treatment and to help the physician monitor the treatment, any side effects and the course of the illness. These are only part of the duties of both parties. For a patient to go into this diagnostic and therapeutic relationship unwilling to be responsible for their part of the contribution is a signal for a doomed relationship even if the physician is honest and trustworthy. So, when you say "I hate my doctor" are you really saying "this relationship is not working out to my satisfaction." Remember, it is a relationship. There are two parties. Think not only how your doctor has been doing but how you did and what, if anything, could you have done better. ..Maurice.

What you say makes sense in the very broadest of terms. You are throwing out generalizations like patients are all the same. It's a very narrow view and not surprising at all to hear it coming from doctors. ( Ivory Tower Syndrome, anyone? ) Yes, your absolutely right, we as patients have a responsibility to ourselves to ask for help and search and search to find the right "fit" for a doctor. But as long as we are throwing around blanket- philosophy, here is one you should try on for size. Did anyone EVER stop to think that patients are FORCED to acknowledge a doctors potential mistakes or lack of knowledge from the moment they make their first appointment? We sign waivers. You know those standard forms that get delivered on trucks?? We sign them when we come to see you in your office. We sign them again when we are scheduled for procedures, treatments, and so forth. If we are so critically ill or injured that we are incapable of signing- then the forms are passed to the next of kin, right? WE - as patients have to acknowledge YOUR humanity- why is it when something doesnt go as a doctor planned- it is the patient who is treated like THEY did something wrong in asking for help? I am the person who posted previously here in this thread with a shattered kidney from shockwave lithotripsy. Why is it that I can open my local newspaper and find recall notices for the smallest simplest things- by companies such Dollar General, and Tire manufacturers for recalls on their products- but when someone is inadvertently hurt by a doctor -suddenly everyone wants to dummy up! They treat that patient like the patient somehow made this problem occur just to make them look bad. Shhh! Dont TALK about it- you might scare off your doctor from wanting to treat you altogether!

Why is there no acknowledgement for the people who genuinely HAVE suffered- the one's who couldnt sue even if they wanted to- which I never did. Many like myself havent. It is already too hard to be treated like a freak of medical science just for surviving it. We are treated like we are bad luck or a potential law suit waiting to happen. I personally have been refused treatment by several kidney specialists whom I had never met before because they "heard" about it-Did anyone stop to think that word of mouth TRAVELS? Many who express an extreme distrust of medical professionals sometimes have excellent reason to do so. In this day and age, when you can buy therapy for your DOGS, there is NOTHING in place for those of us who survive iatrogenic injuries, or the families left behind from someone who didnt make it. There is an unspoken stigma around us- to be careful- blah blah blah. Did anyone ever stop to think that if major companies can admit something they did might not be safe or work perfectly under any circumstance- then what is taking the medical profession so long to catch up? You admit it yoursel;ves that you are capable of errors, so why not go public with it and stop pretending that problems like the one I suffered dont happen. It builds up a wall of ignorance, and that for any healthcare worker on any level- is a shame! It isnt a pretty picture bit it is reality and nothing but acknowledgement, and honest communication and a lack of prejudice is going to change it. I'm not saying it would cure all the ails of the system but it would be a step in the right direction for the profession itself to make a stand on this subject. It would definately make a statement to those of us who are affected by this and to the population in general. When the statistics state 98,000 people a year are injured or killed by medical procedures, drugs, etc. - thats a whole lot of people to make an impresion on, isnt it? Just my two cents.. Kat

Kat, you are absolutely right about the public's and the medical profession's need for concern about safety in medical practice and I have written about this in more recent postings. Not much improvement in the safety of medicine can be expected until all the elements of the medical care profession (physicians, nurses, hospitals and clinics) and their legal consultants give up the worthless idea that it is better to hide mistakes than to admit and apologize and even provide some monetary partial restitution to the patient for them. When mistakes are admitted, they become known and what led up to the mistake can be analyzed so that the system can be changed to try to avoid the mistake in the future. The way the medical profession has handled the medical mistake issue has been self-defeating to the present. With more outpouring of public outrage that mistakes are "allowed" to happen in medicine without identification or analysis (compared to the detailed investigation of aircraft mistakes)and now evidence that admission of mistakes and apologies are less expensive to the profession than hiding the facts, safety in medicine should hopefully improve. Thanks, Kat, for bringing this important topic up on this particular post. ..Maurice.

Anonymous of the 10 pm hour today: This blog is titled "bioethics discussion ". Your comments, though presenting an important and controversial issue in medical practice, are not written in the context of a discussion. If you can outline in a coherent fashion what you find is undethical for a physician to perform circumcision with parental approval (since without the approval of the parents, such an act would represent legal battery), then I will start a new posting just on the topic, because I do think it is worthy of further discussion, and begin with your analysis of the ethics. So, if you want me to start this new post, sit down, take a deep breath, exhale and relax and then write down your ethical argument. ..Maurice.

For me the "I hate Doctors" feeling did not begin until the rise of the HMO. I can still remember when not only did my family doctor know me and my family well, but also spent MORE THAN 10 FREAKING MINUTES WITH ME during an office visit. Not only are the standard appointment times ridiculously short, but the referal process is insanely Byzantine and protracted. When I needed to see an ortopedic specialist, you would have thought I was planning D Day. Forms, phone calls, faxes, still more forms....all with NO HELP from either my PCP or the Orthopedic specialist, or their office staff, or the HMO people. When I was told I needed physical therapy (the final and I must say obvious conclusion), I was simply handed a list of therapists and another stack of forms. When I had the timerity to ask if the Orthopedic specialist could recommend one of literally hundreds of physical therapists on the list, I was told "they're all good". Indeed, the selected one might have been, had they ever bothered to call me back, but I wound up downloading a set of exercises from a sports medicine site and rehabing my knee myself. I am all for taking an active role in my own health, but give me a break! I will not even go into how I wound up on a new medication every time I went in to one PCP, or how another PCP refused me birth control pills unless I also took all the other drugs he wanted to perscribe for my asthma (which I didn't have, it was bronchitis), high cholesterol (which I only have because the assesment of the acceptable range is continually lowered), and high blood pressure (which I only had because this guy pissed me off so much that I was wound up like a spring whenever I saw him). My most recent PCP was so scared to diagnose anything I was sent to a specialist for everything from a sinus infection to a standard annual gyn exam. When I contrast this to the amazing level of care I was given by my old school family doctor and the help his staff gave my folks when I legitimately needed special care, I could cry. The other thing that just infuriates me off is this: when it comes down to it, medicine is a service profession. Why should doctors be held to a different standard than I would hold my lawyer or my hairstylist? For heaven's sake, I AM PAYING THEM TO PERFORM A SERVICE! I know that readers of this blog may object that I should not equate medicine with law or haircare, but my point is that excellence in both care of and rapport with patients is possible. After decades in the brave new world of managed health care, I can only conclude that certain doctors, adminstrators, and drug company execs are making a boatload of money off greatly reduced standards of care and greatly increased perscription sales. What a shame for all the patients and for those doctors and nurses who would like to see quality of care rather than dollars saved be the bottom line.

The child is a distinct person from the parent.The child, not the parent, is the patient.

What are the responsibilitiesof the attending physician tothe child-patient?

A physician, while caring for a patient, mustregard responsibility to the patient as paramountand act in the best interests of the patient.Thephysician must provide competent medical carewith respect for human dignity and human rights.Physicians have legal and ethical duties to theirchild-patient to render competent necessary carebased on what the patient needs, not whatsomeone else, including a parent, expresses.

What are the rights of the child?

The child has a legal right to bodily integrity.Upon reaching adulthood, the child may have aright to sue to recover damages for injuries orunnecessary surgery sustained in childhood.Under international law, a child has the right tosecurity of the person, freedom from torture,inhuman and degrading treatment,and the rightto special protection during his minority.Thechild has a right to be consulted when decisionsare made regarding his welfare.

What are the rights of the parents?

The parent does not have rights with regard to thechild except against all others. The parent doeshave duties and responsibilities to the child. The parent does not have unlimited power to carry out his/her duties and responsibilities.The parent must make decisions for the childbased solely on the best interests of the child, notmere whim. The parent has a limited power togrant permission for investigation, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, when actually present.alternative to circumcision, so similarinformation must be provided about noncircumcision.

Is circumcision harmful?Circumcision amputates approximately 50percent of the heavily innervated skin andmucosa of the penis, tissue that is a specificerogenous zone. Excision of the foreskin rendersthe remaining skin taut and immovable,eliminates its protective, sensory, and sexualfunctions, and destroys the gliding action of theforeskin, changing the natural mechanics ofnormal human reproduction.Circumcision puts the patient at risk of surgicalmishap, adhesions, meatitis, meatal ulceration,infections, bleeding, and even death.Circumcision is an extremely painful procedurewith long-lasting post-operative pain.Circumcision creates an abnormal physicalappearance with a disfiguring scar encirclingthe shaft of the penis and the glans penispermanently exposed to drying, abrasion,and mechanical injury.

Is circumcision a lawful procedure?

Male circumcision is not unlawful,however, inthe absence of a medical indication, it is conceivablethat general laws for the protection of childrencould be applied to non-therapeutic circumcision.As with any surgery, a valid informed consentmust be obtained.The power of parents to grantproxy permission to the non-therapeutic excisionof healthy functional tissue from a child’s body is unclear and the law, therefore, is unstable.

What information musta physician provide?

A physician, prior to obtaining permission fora circumcision, must provide all relevant andmaterial information about the proposed courseof treatment and all relevant and materialinformation about alternative treatments.Information must be provided about the actualextent of amputation, possible benefits, knownrisks, disadvantages, complications, and possibleoutcomes.Non-circumcision is a viable

How long should a physicianmaintain records relating to aninfant circumcision?

Circumcision is a non-therapeutic procedure21that is not essential to current wellbeing.Although it is traditional for parents to decide,such procedures should be deferred until thechild is of age and can decide for himself.Physicians have a duty to consider the feelingsof the child because the child has to live withthe consequences of the circumcision.

Is the non-therapeuticcircumcision of a childan ethical procedure?

The Norwegian Council for Medical Ethics hasadvised the Norwegian Medical Association thatthe circumcision of boys is not consistent withimportant principles of medical ethics.Canning says there is conflict betweencircumcision and the legal and ethical duties ofmedical specialists.The subjection of childpatientsto unnecessary non-therapeutic painfulprocedures is unethical.

Is there a conflict of interest when a Jewish Physician promotes an infant circumcision?

I AM ABOUT TO CUT OFF ALL COMMUNICATION ABOUT CIRCUMCISION ON THIS "I HATE DOCTORS" TOPIC POSTING. Believe me, it is not because I think that the circumcision issue is trival but I think it is very important and as I have stated previously here, I think it belongs on a posting all of its own. The place to write about the cons and I hope some visitors would describe to us the pros of circumcision will be on the July 5, 2006 posting titled "Male Circumcision: Should It Now Be A Crime?". Please go to that post to comment. All further communication about circumcison will be DELETED here. This post you are now reading should contain only concerns and experiences about the care by physicians which evokes the "hate" emotion. Again, remember, NO NAMES OF THOSE YOU HATE please. For those who want to write about their experiences regarding patient modesty as a cause of upset with doctors or nurses or techs, please go to patient modesty. ..Maurice.

Holy guacamole. There is an incredible amount of anger here, and I think both patients and physicians - especially physicians - ought to be concerned.

Some of the anger probably cannot be helped. Some of it probably could be mitigated, however, by a system that is more personal and treats people with the understanding that we are all vulnerable and emotionally needy whenever we are sick or in need of medical care. Physicians who cannot summon up any compassion or empathy for their patients have no business being in direct patient care.

My feelings are mainly ambivalent. Some of my experiences with physicians have been spectacularly bad. More recently, my experiences been quite good, probably because the clinic where I am a patient has begun to take customer service more seriously. They're trying to get it right, and I do appreciate it.

Anonymous from today July 6, 2006, perhaps to help physicians who might come to this blog to recognize what to do to "try and get it right", you could tell us specific examples (no names please) of what you see and find as the right and appreciated approach to patient care. ..Maurice.

WOW!! I read the first few comments and started skimming the rest. So much anger, generalization, blaming and blanket statements! I don't hate Doctors; I strongly dislike one specific doctor and will not recommend him to anyone looking for an OB/GYN, but hate all docs because I had a bad experience with that one guy? I don't think so.

For the most part my experiences with doctors have been very good. I have asthma, diabetes and infertility which was possibly caused by endometriosis (the caused by part is possible, the endo is definite). I have seen MANY docs. With the exception of the one mentioned above, I would see any of them again and will recommend them to anyone that asks.

To make a doctor patient relationship a good one, I think there is responsibility on BOTH sides. It's not up to the doctor alone. Being an informed patient is not looked down on as someone mentioned above...my experience is that most doctors appreciate that. If you as a patient take the time to learn about an issue you are having (don't try to diagnose yourself though), it makes the doctors job of educating you a lot easier. Also, if the doctor wants you to try something, a med, an exercise, etc...try it! If it doesn't work you can report that to the doctor. If it's something you've already tried, say so! The doctor doesn't know if you don't tell him/her. If a doctor is running behind schedule, deal with it! That kids rash that showed up may have turned out to be chicken pox and now everyone in the office has been exposed...the doctor has to deal with that before they get to you...and next time it might be you that shows up with something much bigger then you thought and makes the doctor late. The docs don't like being late anymore then the patients like them to be late. Coming in with a bad attitude sets the tone for the entire visit. If you are arrogant, angry, short, etc...that will be reflected right back to you, that's human nature and docs are human just like the rest of us. When it comes to the ER...complaining about waiting gets you no where...just wait. Unless you came in via ambulance, carried unconcsious by someone, have a bone protruding or blood pumping out on the floor, you can wait. That's just the way it is. If you think you are having a heart attack or you are having an asthma attack, you will be brought in quickly!

doctors who listen and remember things not in the chart about their patients are the ones I like best. Of course, if someone doctor hops, then it's impossible to have a relationship with a doc so remembering things will not happen. I also appreciate it when a doctor says "I don't know". Honesty works wonders. Of course, that should be followed up with "let's find out"...in whatever form that takes, be it lab tests, phone calls or referrals.

Someone also mentioned being the employee of doctors. I did patient accounts for 10 years and now am going to nursing school. Patient accounts is the "unwanted/direly needed step-child" in a medical office. Yes, it is true that doctors yell at you, look down on you, whatever...but that is also true of lawyers, mechanics, retail managers, police captains. It's called hierarchy and that's your boss. Bad boss' do that, and good ones do it sometimes. Of the three offices I worked in, only one office had a doc that did that and there were four in the office. It didn't take me long to learn that when he came in after doing procedures in the hospital all morning, it was best to let him have his lunch before approaching him with anything more than a casual wave as he went by my office.

Hi, Dr. Bernstein, this is anonymous from July 6. Thank you for asking for more details.

These are some of the examples I have seen at my clinic:

- The physician goes through my chart *before* coming into the exam room. I appreciate that he puts some preparation into the visit so we can dive right into the reason I am there. Not only is it more efficient for everyone, but it also tends to build patient confidence when your first impression of the doc is that he's prepared, vs. spending the first couple minutes of the visit watching the doc page through your chart and bring himself up to speed.

- Good eye contact

- Asking questions and eliciting information from me, vs. doing all the talking.

- Taking notes. Even if it's just a couple of scribbles, it helps me feel like I am actually being listened to.

- Explaining his thought processes - why he thinks further testing is needed, why it's probably OK to watch and wait on something, etc. He also outlines what we're going to do next, what the timeframe will be, what the options are, etc. I feel like I am included in the communications loop and have some idea of what to expect.

- He always ends the visit by thanking me for coming in and telling me to call if I have any questions or concerns. I think it is reassuring for patients to know that the door is open, so to speak.

- All the staff, from the appointment clerks to the lab technicians, are friendly and polite. They come across as actively wanting to help. They apologize if there's a billing goof-up or a long wait.

- Waiting times. There aren't any. I don't know if this is good scheduling or what, but I rarely have to wait more than 10 minutes for anything.

- Electronic medical records. I know a lot of physicians hate the EMR, but when it's done right, it can greatly improve the process for patients. I am on medication for a thyroid that was damaged by radiation therapy several years ago; I used to have to allow 3-4 days minimum to get a TSH screen scheduled, get the results to the physician and get the drug order to the pharmacy so my prescription can be renewed each year. Now the test can be ordered and completed and reviewed by the physician in a fraction of the time.

- In the bigger picture, this clinic (regional multispecialty group) is actively involved in population health initiatives, best-practice initiatives and so forth. Their image is of an organization that cares about having a healthy community and practicing according to the best evidence-based medicine. They also do a fair amount of collaboration with the local hospital and county public health agency.

Although I'm sure you could find people who hate this clinic, overall the organization seems to enjoy a positive reputation with the public.

Thanks for the last comment by Anonymous from July 6th. Teaching "Introduction to Clinical Medicine" to first and second year students, we cover each of these professional behavior issues noted and observe all the students as they interact with real patients and then afterward provide constructive feedback to the students. So at the outset of their careers, they are taught the right way of behaving but what happens later when they are on their own, under time and other issue constraints and not under mentor supervision, then, well, poor behavior may then happen as so many of the comments suggest. But then as Anonymous has experienced, even later in the physician's careers, poor behavior does not have to happen. Thanks. ..Maurice.

CONCORD, N.H. -- A judge has ordered the state Board of Medicine to stop disciplinary proceedings against a doctor accused of telling a patient she was so obese she might only be attractive to black men and advising another to shoot herself following brain surgery.

Judge Edward Fitzgerald made clear in a ruling released Thursday that he did not condone remarks attributed to Dr. Terry Bennett and found them unnecessary, but ruled Bennett had a right to speak bluntly.

"It is nonetheless important ... to ensure that physicians and patients are free to discuss matters relating to health without fear of government reprisal, even if such discussions may sometimes be harsh, rude or offensive to the listener," he concluded in the ruling Wednesday.

The complaints against Bennett included charges that he told a white patient that she was so obese she might only be attractive to black men.

"Let's face it, if your husband were to die tomorrow, who would want you?" the board has said Bennett told the overweight patient in June 2004. "Well, men might want you, but not the types you want to want you. Might even be a black guy," it quoted him as saying, based on the woman's complaint.

Bennett, 68, has denied making the comment, but has said he's seen polls supporting that position.

"If you look at the polling, nobody likes fat women," he said last year. "Is it right? No. Is it sensible? No. Is it true? Yeah ... Black guys are the only group that don't mind that. Is that racist to say that?"

A 2001 complaint accused Bennett of telling a woman recovering from brain surgery to buy a pistol and shoot herself to end her suffering. The doctor was also accused of speaking harshly to a woman about how her son might have contracted hepatitis, according to the ruling.

Bennett claimed victory.

"If you look at the polling, nobody likes fat women," he said last year. "Is it right? No. Is it sensible? No. Is it true? Yeah ... Black guys are the only group that don't mind that. Is that racist to say that?" -- Dr. Terry Bennett

"The question now is: Will the board waste more of your and my tax dollars and appeal this, or accept done as done?" he said in a telephone interview.

Fitzgerald also ruled that state and American Medical Association requirements to treat patients with "compassion and respect for human dignity and rights" are so vague they are unconstitutional. Bennett probably would have won his challenges before the board, the judge said.

Bennett said he planned to sue everyone involved for "malicious prosecution."

"I am not inclined to be forgiving about it," he said. "It's been devastating and infuriating."

Assistant Attorney General Elyse Alkalay, who represented the board in the court case, said she was reviewing the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal.

Bennett could have faced penalties ranging from a written reprimand to suspension or revocation of his medical license.Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press

Doctors are not trustworthy. Unfortunately this is what happens when a profession allows the inept, the deceitful and the psychotic to continue to practice.

An individual was brought into the emergency room. The individual was unconscious. When the individual began to awaken they coughed up blood. The emergency room 'doctor' attempted to prosecute her patient for 'offensive' behavior.

I absolutely promise to talk about this once and never again...doctor hating........and sort of half forgetting you are a doctor. Cause its not too fun a day for me.I just came in from another doc visit. I have something they call a "very large" syrnix and ongoing neurolgic pain and my back is out and I was being sent to a neurologist by the oncologist, well actually my gastro guy if I can keep it straight, because I was in worse pain in my upper left side recently and sorting it out was what I've been doing... . I have had two stromal tumor surgeries...la te dah...I've spent 16 years after the sudden severe onset of headaches chasing things like a bladder that spent 5 years acting strange, chest pain that floors me,headaches in another realm, neck pain...at some point after MRI's this syrnix was found.That was a doc at UCLA who was great but later stopped taking insurance and I went locally...Then much later the tumors were found after years of bleeds.Two unrelated things neither of which are all that common I guess. It has expanded- this syrnix, but this neurologist hereafter called "really old narcissistic "Man of Science"(his words)" lacking tests from 12 years ago seems sure its "the same". I recall the size and its expanded. A great deal as it turns out....but I don't know where to keep that....Long and short of it is I deal with syringomyelia, trying to teach. live. I'm not especially a person who likes to live inside a "condition", I hate medicine unless I need it and then I take it-so I take the Nexium because a hiatal hernia gives me gastric distress.But I am not too fond of side effects. Anyway getting the tumor diagnosed took 15 years-I guess its not easy to know-had anemia all that time almost always below 8 the level dropping to 4 for a long while after a bleed.Was told for years and years I had a rare blood disorder.(I was a journal article for that doctor)Wasn't infused until 4 years ago I don't know why not-couldn't metabolize iron... In short I've really warred with my body these last years. And again I'm completely forgetting the you are also a doctor thing here-to me you are a blog and for some reason I'm telling you my tale.But honestly doctors kind of scare me and that's the hate thing isn't it...scared because I don't get to help.... even tho there are doctors in the family I love..... Today Dr. Neurologist who I really DO NOT LIKE tells me to get on Prozac because, after telling me "I am a dog"(not like a dog, are a dog...oh my God I'm also a metaphor)-(see, he says, a dog if chasing their tail or chewing their paw-you put them on Prozac)...I am thinking and flashing to a guy beating a dog and considering that maybe not Prozac, maybe new owner.... and after he goes through some other rather poorly hung stuff advises this to help the body deal with pain.I get that...about the pain. Tho his way of saying this was really unpleasant to say the least and I , as I said,flashed to an image of him beating the dog.... Now I know logically a bit about long term pain and I've had 5 major operations in 3 years and bouts of peritonitis-I know pain is like a cycle....and I know the whole SSRI thing. Of course he assumes my ed level as much like my students in an underperforming area-real low. Anyway I'm there because my oncologist who is fairly brilliant tells me that the syrnix is a very big issue and took it to the tumor board and all these doctors were there-the syrnix pics- that my whole system is affected by the spine and she thinks that it deserves good neurologic care...she said awhile ago she did not particularily want me to see this guy-doesn't care for him...but my gastro guy likes him. So I went. I got upset really to my core...as to me on Prozac...well...that's going down a slope for me. Next stop.....maybe your pain is all in your head. Except no..he sees the nerve dysfunction in some EEg thing. I don't know. He tells me he has no bedside manner and this "is his saving grace", plus a nice thing about "not being your Dad"..Well okay. No doubt on that I'm not even remortely looking for Dad, Dr. Neurologist.. I came out kind of in a state I'll call it ....polka trauma. But it's really just...holy cow.

So I can't quite understand why this felt badly, but it did. I am supposed to return in a week to get Lyrica, took Neurotin, just lately its not helping. I'm too over weight which for the doctor verifies depression.I've had four major operations in a couple years and I gained -too much not being up. I suppose ...I thought it was an outgrowth of not doing much after surgeries, pretty severe neurolgia and generally eating mom's fudge.I had a lot to deal with too, she had a stroke. But I know I need to diet. I am not sure about the talk on seretonin. The gist was I could get more of it-all will be fine. Just have a pill. That makes me very ambivilent. Adam, my student, took Prozac up on the Rez where I worked-kid in my room- ran around in psychotic visions until they finally stopped it-somehow I rather feel ambivilent. He told me not to tell anyone of the med, not family nor friend. I just sort of sat there. I don't know. I think what I really want is for a doctor to simply say every so often, these pains, the stiffness, the discomfort-yes-that's the syrnix, ....kind of just be a concerned once a year kind of check in and share. Not a thing that feels like I've got to go hide myself in a closet and take my meds. So right now I'm just kind of shocked. But I did learn the thing is "very large". That sounds real great. 16 years ago they called it "very small". Even I know one is quite different than the other. Obviously it expanded. I suppose my ignoring plan is failing. Pain comes in episodic spurts which are pretty life challenging. I was never sure was it this or this...kind of complicated by having a rather rare tumor, which recurs. But my recent PET scan was ok. Again...I'm just figuring my way thru this and typing. I wish I could weigh the pain...with med suggestion...with what to do in a very limited medical town...with what to do to feel good and happy about my course of action.

Oh enough. I get meds do help too, don't get me wrong, I see this too. I suppose in the end I rather liken it to finding ways to help people heal and that requires complex things through time, doesn't it. Not to sound too immature but I saw this nice thing on what is a doctor doing on Northern Exposure. It fit. Kind of assisting healing in so many ways. Hard.

I'm enjoying your blog. Thanks for letting me chat when I was at the apointment, I realized my shirt was on inside out and the doctor is saying Prozac.I hate doctors visits...hows that...Sarah

I found this post by coming home from a bad Dr.'s appointment and googling 'I Hate Doctors" - I assume I'm not the only one. A few thoughts: I wonder how many doctors suffer from chronic illnesses. I'd be curious to know their thoughts having been the repeated patient as well as the practitioner. I guess their experiences might be different from the average patient though, as they might get special treatment. Chronic illnesses that don't generally result in death do not seem to be taken that seriously. Sure, I understand that I'm not in immediate danger, but we're still talking about my life! When my body acts in inexplicable ways, i feel disempowered and frightened. Being essentially brushed off because I'm not going to die anytime soon is truly upsetting. As a patient with Crohn's disease and RA, I have spent lots of time in specialists' offices. I have generally had far worse care from specialists than primary care physicians. Is this because the knowledge becomes more esoteric and real live patients become less interesting? Is it ego?I have two friends training in medical professions. While i have no doubt that they both want the best for their patients and want to be good at their jobs, neither are the most empathetic people I know. I wonder if people with fewer personal boundaries are more likely to stay away from the challenges of the medical professions. I really do respect much of what Dr. Bernstein said above regarding 'consumer choice' and finding a medical professional, but I don't think the system is entirely ready for any of us to 'shop around' - and this is coming from someone who has 'fired' several doctors... The first time any of us see a new doctor, we have a medical problem that needs fixing. there is no pre-illness visit, insurance doesn't pay for it, and doctors wouldn't put up with it. much like other professionals, they are not employed by the end-user (patient), and are really only answerable to professional associations, institutions, etc. They aren't really subject to the market in the same way a plumber or tailor would be. And a doctor with unhappy patients don't really have any recourse (unless we're talking about malpractice, and even then - its not an easy road). Also, I don't want this industry to become more consumer oriented - medical care is not like buying cereal - more choices aren't the answer. Sure, it may feel empowering to 'shop around' but we're dealing with intensly personal issues here... And doctors should not be 'fired' for giving bad news. A doctor is not good at his/her job because the patient is happy, and that's what shoppers would be looking for. Essentially, the best doctors I've had are the ones that have sat down with me and discussed my conditions and my options, respected my opinions, answered my questions (given me the chance to ask my questions!) and provided me with the opportunity to tell them what's going on. They're the ones that want copies of my records from other doctors - even if they're not in the same specialty - because they understand that the different systems of my body are interconnected. The doctors I've liked have treated me as a whole human being, not a specific set of symptoms.

People do not like doctors because of the expense involved, which directly leads to insurance hassles and often worsening conditions due to spending time fighting red tape when all they want to do is see a freaking doctor. This phenomenon has killed people.

And the root of it is greed. Doctors are too often in it for the money, and "oh yeah, I like helping people" as a side note.

Take the ridiculous doctor pay out of the equation, attract those who are truly in it for what it IS...a public service...and the rest of the problems will go away.

As in everything else, money is the root of evil in medicine. Most doctors are not honorable people. Most are leeches making gross sums of money off of others misfortunes. The only difference between doctors and lawyers is lawyers work much, much harder and aren't damaging others' health in their greed.

Anonymous from today September 13th, what do you see as "public service"? Restaurant workers and plumbers serve the public and so do physicians. If you meant, physicians should be treated like the city police and firemen who provide public service under the wings or badge of city government, that might not be a bad idea. The doctor's professional expenses would be paid by the city, the doctor would be free of malpractice insurance costs since the city would be responsible for the indemnification of any injuries to the patients, the doctor would most likely get a decent salary and like police and firemen would get early retirements and worthy benefits. It almost couldn't be better! And, if the physicians are paid by the city, that means that no citizen could not afford being under the care of a physician--it is a public service. Of course, every citizen would be subjected to taxes for the city to pay for the public service. Anonymous, go to it and pressure your politicians to put the practice of medicine into the same public service as the police, fire, street maintenence, sewers.. it could solve a lot of problems,both for physicians and patients.

I do have some disagreement with you on whether "most doctors are not honorable people" and indeed "leeches". On the other hand, I suspect those who come to this thread and agree with the title "I Hate Doctors" would also agree with your description. ..Maurice.

I too hate doctors and have a hard time believing that a person chooses a career in medicine purely for altruistic reasons. What do doctors typically do? They heal the sick and injured. Ironically, when some one needs medical attention, a two hour wait in the ER waiting room is normal. However, what do doctors do when a patient refuses medical treatment? They FORCEFULLY give it to the patient. If I know that I am going to die and refuse treatment,the doctors claim "you are not mentally stable" and proceed to LOCK you down and force medicine down your throat. I ardently believe a persons right to die is decided by the indiviual not by someone I have known for twenty minutes. The biggest sting however is not forced treatment, it is the $10,000 medical bill that I/insurance have to pay for something i so vehemently did not want. The reason why I hate doctors? Simply because they infringe on my basic human rights, and enforce their ethics onto their victims. I feel those who want to be treated should be, and those that do not (including the able minded mentally ill) should have their request granted. America could learn a lot from the Dutch Health System.

I don't hate all doctors, some listen to what I have to say even when their time is limited. I do have a question for any doctors out there? Why is it that we have so many specialist and sub-spedcialist now? What happened to the general practitioner? I belong to a huge HMO and I sometimes wonder why I have to go to an Internist when all I have is a head cold. I feel that I am taking up his time on something trivial when he could be doing what he was trained for. I'm an Insulin-dependent Diabetic, but I don't feel I have to go to my Internist for something trivial. Could someone tell me why medical students don't go into general practice? Is it the money?

It's way past time to let the market come into Medicine and boot the AMA for all the damage it has done protecting the dangerous, the incompetent, the psychotic against scrutiny by their patients.

Two developments:

1. Walmart, Walgreens and other stores are offering in-store nurse-practitioner services including prescriptions. Walmart has a $45 flat fee with no appointment necessary. A customer can walk in, get a diagnosis and walk out with the prescription already filled. McMedicine has come to town.

2. You can now go on a medical vacation to places like Thailand and India where, for a fraction of the cost, you can receive surgeries in a resort-like hospital.

The results?

The Medical Establishment will likely try and denigrate the competition by saying that they are not trustworthy or competent. Considering that there are anywhere from 100K-200K fatalities resulting from medical malpractice in the USA each year, doctors in glass houses shouldn't be throwing bricks.

The USA has the world's most expensive medicine but not the world's best healthcare. We deserve better than what the Medical Establishment has foisted on us. While we're booting the AMA from its monopolistic perch, we should also boot private medical insurance which is 10-20 times less efficient than Medicare.

In my experience, my worst doctors have been in family practice ("primary care physicians") and my best have been specialists. Invariably. No exceptions. I'm sure this will make some PCPs mad, and I hope it does. :-) I have a Ph.D.; I am female, and to be blunt, I am pretty smart. I have had enough problems with misdiagnosis and incompetence that I have become an active researcher of my own health, and I'm usually pretty accurate. The doctors I get along with are the specialists, because they have thus far been as smart as I am, and they understand intelligence when they see it and don't underestimate me. (Not that they should be talking down to their other patients, but I can see how it would be frustrating when some mega-obese person like one of my relatives has problem after problem and acts like it's such an unfair shock that his body is falling apart after years of self-abuse.) My PCPs have universally been less intelligent than I am. I know the type - the overachieving, slightly above-average-intelligence kids from middle class families who had good educations that helped them get into med school, but really just weren't anything special as far as brains go. I kicked their rear ends in school and I still do. Recently, I corrected my PCP's mistake in a medicinal dosage and he was incapable of understanding the simple math that led to my logical conclusion. He got all arrogant, and yet I knew that the reason he couldn't explain his own position was that he himself did not know the biochemistry of how my medication is metabolized, and therefore he could not explain it to me.My conclusion: PCPs are the medical school losers, with probably only a few rare exceptions who go into PC-providing out of real idealism. (Interestingly, pediatricians are good, despite their status as pcps for kids. I'm guessing there is more competition for pediatric residencies.)

I've had horrible doctors. I've had awesome doctors. No difference between PCP and specialists - it's all a mix. These folks who say they hate all doctors - do they hate all dry cleaners? Do they hate all restaurant chefs? What a load of crap.

If I go to a doctor I don't like - because I don't feel listened to, or respected, I just don't see that doctor again. If I go to a doctor (like my beloved PCP) who listens, who is empathetic, who works hard to figure out what's wrong with me (regardless of how esoteric), who sees me as a whole person, I'll stick with them forever and bake cookies for them.

Doctors are no different than any other service provider. Some are brilliant, some are incompetent or just jack asses. Same thing with cops - some become cops to help people and do good in their community. Some become cops just for the power and the chance to abuse peope. Some people become doctors because they are deeply moved by the opportunity to relieve suffering and help people through the hardest times in their lives. Some become doctors so they can fool themselves into thinking they're superior beings.

How can anyone justify judging an entire profession based upon the bad apples? Unless it's politicians? :)

I hate doctors espcially nose and dentist onesThey won't leave your face alone! I hated once a orthodontist shoved a retainer in my mouth as hard as he could and the searing pain was horrible. He then blamed me for not wearing my retainer enough as if I caused my own pain. I have met nice doctors and bad ones I actually wish there were more nice ones that would let you raise your hand to say stop and would reasure you and distract you.Another time for the nose operation I never wanted when I was 12. But he gave me your going to die lecture so I thought alright whatever. But because of my small veins the doctor kept poking me with the I.V. It seemed forever and I was scared.I felt so helpless. After I woke up from the nose operation with 2 plastic splits shoved up my nose.Since the I.V I've had novacaine post tramtic stress ever since.

I don't have doctors in particular, but I really dislike medical attention. So much of it seems invasive, experimental, and pointless. It seems like the realm of what is known is some tiny fragment of what is NOT known, and yet there is no shortage of physicians who behave as if they had the crystal ball.

I've been lucky to have a couple of great PCPs who took time, knew who I was, understood me as a person. And, most important to me, knew perfectly well that if I was bothering to call the office, it must be something fairly important. Or something that simply requires the timely attention of a doctor, like antibiotics.

I've had far more doctors who tarred the whole profession with a foul and stench-covered brush.

The orthopedist who removed a ganglion cyst and was surprised to find that a giant mass of scar tissue had developed under the dressing, and who HAD TO BE PROMPTED to offer OT to deal with this.

The gyn who prescribed hormones when I mentioned light pill-related breakthrough bleeding, despite existing evidence of endometriosis. When I asked if I should simply discontinue the Pill, he insisted that the answer was no and to take these hormones.

The gyn who replaced the above gyn after taking hormones with endometriosis had a predictable result. This gyn found I had a mildly irregular pap smear and didn't see fit to have me notified of this. I showed up to consult over treatment of the endometriosis and found him ready to do a biopsy. When I protested this, I was mocked. And then manipulated, as he refused to treat the endo unless I agreed to let him do cryo on my cervix. And then he ARGUED with me when I complained that the cryo was excessively painful.

The neurologist I have now, who I wound up with after falling suddenly, who packed me out of the hospital, unable to walk, and insisted on waiting a month (that's a month with no PT) for a follow-up. He's withheld information that has caused me to wind up in seriously unsafe situations that would have been totally avoided had I known that a risk existed. He's refused to discuss symptoms, even when directly asked for this information. He treats my body like an object, and not a valuable object. He laughs at my gait problem. He has told my PT - despite any evidence to support this - that my gait problems are all in my mind.

I was knocked unconscious and taken to an ER of a small community hospital. The diagnosis was wildly incorrect and, after several days of zero care and much actual abuse, I was finally released.

In the many months since then, I have been unable to obtain information regarding the 'care' and 'services' provided. There is a huge stone wall which refuses to budge and, the administration amazingly, says that I should contact a new doctor to tell me what they did when I was in their care.

It's the twilight zone.

What they do want is payment for their utter lack of care. IMO the only thing to do is to file complaints with the government, their accreditation organization, their medical societies.

IMO healthcare in the US is bad and getting worse all the time. It is, amazingly, also getting more expensive all the time.

I now not only hate doctors, I no longer trust ANY healthcare provider from the EMT to the surgeon. IMO, they're all in exactly the same boat with the worst of their profession.

If they can't police themselves and kick out the worst offenders, they have only themselves to blame when the public turns against them.

I hate arrogant, sadistic, amoral, money-grubbing scumbags, and unfortunately, it seems far too many of these types have weaseled their way into the medical profession. I am one of the millions of people with chronic pain in this country who is at the “mercy” of the American medical profession, and thus cannot get my pain treated. I am not sure what criteria you have to meet to be one of the worthy few who can get proper treatment, but it is abundantly clear that I don’t meet those criteria, and therefore, deserve to be tortured. Not only have they refused to treat my pain, but they have labeled me as having a “dependency personality” a “drug seeker” and as having a “history of alcohol abuse” even though there is no merit in any of these vile and despicable accusations. For no other reason, apparently, then that I dared asked to have my pain treated (obviously a drug addict) and I have an Irish name (obviously an alcoholic), I find myself branded as a criminal with a lifetime sentence of torture over my head, and no way to get a pardon or reprieve unless I can somehow find a doctor willing to forget all that and give me a chance at relief (the search for which makes me a doctor shooper). Then I have to figure out how to pay the exhorbitant cost of the drugs I need.

I am also the contact person for my chronic pain support group, and have performed that role in other groups I was involved in where I used to live. As such I get to talk to a large majority of the people who are interested in visiting the group, even if most of them never come, and I am intimately familiar with their stories and medical history. In 14 years, I have never met a single person, not one, who doesn’t have a horror story about abusive, humiliating or degrading treatment from the medical profession. The vast majority either cannot get any treatment at all, or receive inadequate treatment, and only a handful are really satisfied with the treatment they are receiving, usually those who can get relief on low doses of narcotics. Most, like me, have been labeled as “addicts,” been told to “toughen up,” “be a man,” “take responsibility for yourself” and all the rest of the horseshit from doctors who don’t have the balls or the ethics to do the job they swore an oath to do, but love to play Johnny Macho when it comes to someone else’s life. I cannot describe in words the rage, the anger, the frustration and utter powerlessness I feel from just hearing one of these stories, let alone hundreds. The problem is compounded by the fact that I know how much I have suffered and how horrendous and unliveable my life has become because of pain and having to deal with this system, and then I am listening to fine, heroic people whose problems and experiences are far worse than mine by many degrees, and I simply cannot get my mind around the sheer magnitude of the suffering these people have to endure. I cannnot understand, or accept, that people should have to suffer this way, or be treated with such casual, cavalier and barbaric cruelty by a group of people allegedly sworn to do them no harm.

The fact of the matter is that if you have chronic pain, doctors are not your friends, they are the enemy. It used to be in this country that if you had pain, you could walk into any corner pharmacy or general store and buy yourself enough pain medication to last you a month for less than half a day’s wages. You didn’t have to prove yourself somehow worthy of not being tortured. Then the medical profession convinced the government that it should be the gatekeeper over these drugs, deciding who would and would not get them, and in what dosages. Allegedly, this was for our own good, but the end result was the beginning of the abomination we call “pain treatment” in America today. Pain patients are now criminals and will be treated accordingly until proven otherwise, and you cannot get relief from your pain unless God Almighty the doctor is having a good day and decides to give you a break. The prices of narcotic drugs are astronomical due to the artificial, government-created monopoly and are well beyond the reach of most Americans without insurance. Over 250,000 Americans a year attempt suicide because of chronic pain, and some 10-15,000 succeed. Millions of others have had their lives crushed and destroyed by this merciless juggernaut. And on top of that is the abusive and degrading experience of dealing with smug, smarmy, arrogant doctors who get a rush out of the power they have over you. The medical profession knows it has us by the balls, and in their sadism and arrogance, just cannot resist abusing the patients who are at their mercy.

If you are a chronic pain “patient,” imagine a world where none of this was necessary. Where you could treat your own pain at reasonable cost without a by-your-leave from the white-coated kleptocracy, and didn’t have to put up with all this abusive and degrading treatment. Where you didn’t have to sell you house or risk bankruptcy to get relief from pain. Do you think your health as a chronic pain person would improve? I surely do. But the medical professon, in its infinite wisdom, assures us that the result of such freedom would be utter chaos. This is a lie, and the history speaks for itself. It is our current system that is in a state of utter chaos. Anything is better than this.

So let me say without reservation that I absolutely despise doctors. I think they are the lowest from of scum on the face of the Earth, and they should thank whatever scum god they pray to that I’m not the one dealing out justice for their multiple and incessant abuses of human life, as I would have a good number of them lined up against a wall and shot as an example to the others. As for the good doctors who are legitimately trying to help their patients and doing their job as ethically as possible given the realities of this system, my hat’s off to you, but at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, you are also part of the problem. You are part of the problem because this system was set up to benefit you, not your patients, and you play right along with it, remaining silent while you watch the horrors inflicted on people with pain by your colleagues, and you don’t hesitate to bill patients even when you have failed to successfully treat them despite a good faith effort on your part. You, who would never pay a mechanic for failing to fix you car, think your failures should be rewarded so long as you tried hard enough. Your patients deserve better. Get the hell out of the way and let them have it.

Worth reading, malpractice by the boatload or 40K deaths per year yet suits aren't successful....so just die. Depraved indifference which goes to show why there are an estimated 100K-200K deaths by medical malpractice every year but not 100K-200K doctors and health practitioners going to prison every year or, at the least, losing their license.

Unbelievable. Pathetic. Americans pay about twice what anyone else in the world pays and for that we receive less care.

Yes it is true, WAKE UP AMERICA...!! THERE ARE MORE DEATHS IN THE US EVERY YEAR, DUE TO "MEDICINE" & DOCTORS...THAN IN ANY WAR GOING ON!!

THAT is why people "hate" "Dr.s"...becuase they are Killing people!!! :) :) They & the AMA are also arrogant, narrow minded & dumb. To think that drugs & only drugs are going to heal somebody & to block out ALL other modes of healing from the practice ie: alternative modes such as Herbs, Accupuncture, Supplements etc...is Assinine, & totally insane!

The ONLY thing the western medical field has of Value is it's diagnostic abilities & it's emergency care..other than this, it is "fool's gold". Hospitals have become death factories especially for our seniors!! then, there is no way to hold an assanine murderous Dr. accountable for killing your loved one, because the laws are set up so as to grossly limit the amount of time mourning family members have to act, & the amount of money so finding a good lawyer is near impossible!! THAT is why some people "hate" Doctors in the US! They are aLLowed to kill people every single day with almost NO consequences..the statistics prove it. My dearly beloved incredible vibrant alive father was one of it's most recent victoms..eaten alive by this system of health "care".

Dr.'s arrogance that they & only they & their extremely limited resources can heal people is causing more deaths every single day than Any War going on! It IS a truely bloody mess, it is a silent War going on in the places we take our loved ones to get Well!! You cannot get more twisted nor sick than that!

Also, Health insurance in this country pays for this rediculous system & ONLY that. That is not even freedom. I should have the freedom to decide how & where I want to be treated, not FORCED into going to a Doctor who recently killed my dad. A Doctor whom I KNOW now has absolutely NO idea what the hell he is doing as far as health goes.

In this day & age, any Doctor who is not also trained in some form of "alternative" medecine such as - Holistic, Naturopathy - Herbs - Chinese Medicine - Nutrition - etc..is an idiot that I would not even want to have a conversation with at a cocktail party!!

Once we understand and accept this idea, then a hospital or a clinic or a doctor's office is no different from a store or a restaurant or a car repair shop. It's clear that medicine is only about money, about making a buck, about making as much profit as possible for the least amount of risk.

When we treat the medical profession with the same skepticism as we treat any other business and demand acceptable service for the money, we will begin to improve the healthcare system. Medicine should, like other businesses, be subject to the demands of the marketplace with the AMA banned as the monopoly it is.

I am a physician and do you realize and understand that I can examine and treat a patient, not because I assume to have some personal right to do so? I think many of the writers to this thread may be unaware of the following truism: It has been and still is society that has given physicians the permissions, the authority, the license to carry out the activities which they perform. It is not the American Medical Association, it is the public who make up our society both here in the United States and throughout the world. If society is unhappy, dissatisfied, uncomfortable, angry with how the medical profession is behaving, the people (society) can change the rules, divest doctors of certain permissions, certain authority and make any license more difficult to obtain. And neither the doctors nor the American Medical Association or any other association of doctors can do anything about it. Government, politicians, state medical boards, these bodies and authorities which represent the public and serve the public, the people, the society, should and must respond to the wishes of the people.If you or your neighbors are dissatisfied with the way medicine is being practiced, get the people together, be heard by your local medical boards, by your representatives, by your government and change the rules. And finally, if you are angry with your doctor, tell your doctor why you are angry. Make sure he or she knows exactly what is upsetting you, even if you don't return. Request and listen to the response. That is a far more direct and effective way to express your upset about the person or system and to educate the doctor and yourself about the issue rather than complaining to a blog. ..Maurice.

The vast majority of doctors are arrogant jerks – even the ones who are family members. Doctors certainly do have a “holier than thou” attitude. I remember when my great uncle, who is a doctor, used to come visit my grandma before she passed away. He’d talk about the kids of their mutual friends. He’s say things like, “John’s son didn’t amount to much. He’s an insurance salesman” or “An associate’s degree is worthless.” I believe he even put down teachers once to my grandma (she was a teacher before she had her kids). Toward the end, he never came to visit my grandma when she was in the convalescent home (my mom and I think he was ashamed of her). He didn’t even try to help my grandma when she was in the hospital. The specialist “helping” my grandma was very arrogant and rude to my mother and me. My great uncle is a GP, so perhaps he was too intimated to defend us or my grandma. Whether he was intimated or simply didn’t care is irrelevant. Either way, he is totally devoid of character and honor. I have another great uncle (one of my grandma’s other brothers) who was a neurosurgeon. I don’t know him very well as he has never had much to do with the family, but I do know that he was “quizzing” me at my grandma’s funeral (i.e. asking me questions to see how smart/knowledgeable I was about various things) – he might have a high IQ, but he’s still an idiot!

Despite the fact that I have several doctors (and lawyers) in my family, I grew up lower middle classed. My mom worked in the school cafeteria and my step dad was a second rate auto mechanic who worked at a place like Jiffy Lube. We didn’t make enough money for medical insurance, yet we didn’t qualify for medical cards. Anyhow, doctors almost always talked down to my family. They had no respect for us and rarely helped us (actually, they never helped us – the antibiotics they prescribed did sometimes). Recently, my mother thought she was going to have to have a hysterectomy. Her doctor was trying to push her into it until he found out she didn’t have insurance. Luckily, my mom contracted a women’s group and got a referral to a decent female doctor (the females are better than the men, in general, but there are still lots of bad apples in both bunches). Anyhow, mom found out she didn’t need the surgery after all as there were more cost effective and less invasive cures for what was wrong with her.

It is appalling just how arrogant and greedy most doctors are. They oscillate between talking down to patients and using a bunch of Latin jargon (most of the things they say could be explained in common language without being condescending). They seem to think they are the only intelligent being on earth. If you ask me, professors, engineers, scientists, and even some high school teachers, cops, business people, etc. are smarter than the average doctor).

Doctors aren’t all that special. Their egomaniacal attitudes are really dangerous for the public. I honestly think the majority of doctors would fail to give a patient the best medical care if the patient or his family offended the doctor’s ego.

Doctor’s should be monitored like everyone else is (teachers are evaluated by peers, administrators, and various objective measures – the police have internal affairs, etc.). We hear a lot about the bad apples in these professions because they are monitored. I’d bet a million bucks that we’d hear even more about doctors. Remember, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Currently, doctors have nearly absolute power over life and death. This is unacceptable! The law should mandate that doctors (and dentists, optometrists, etc. - who often times are also arrogant asses) have a camera in their offices and camera should be mounted above surgery in operating rooms. These cameras should transmit, via the internet, to some regulatory board. Doctor’s work should be recorded and also periodically watched by other experts in real time to ensure that doctors are behaving themselves (note: this would also protect the rare good doctor from bogus lawsuits).

PS to above post...Maurice is right about one thing. We should organize and try to change the way doctors and the health care system work. Unfortunately, I don't have the money, knowledge, or power, but maybe someone here does. Please consider my video monitoring idea. It should be required by law. Doctors should have to pay for the system to be set up (they should also be required to pay the monthly monitoring fee). If they practice without the system (except in emergencies, they should be criminally prosecuted). Lord knows they make enough money to afford this monitoring! I think this would solve a lot of the trouble.

Actually Maurice, what you said on 12/10 is not really true. It is the AMA that used the 'standard' of Johns Hopkins to close medical schools in the US of A a century ago.

The AMA is still wielding this monopoly power by lobbying the US Congress to cut the number of foreign doctors admitted to the US by half. The AMA is a monopoly and, as such, is anathema to the supposedly market-centric USA.

Obviously it is not only doctors and the AMA who have made a mess of the US healthcare system. The other parts of the equation are the drug and insurance companies both of which have bought and paid for a large part of the US Congress.

Look at the Medicare Bill which is liable to bankrupt Medicare but is enriching pharmaceutical companies. Against the lobbying forces of the AMA, Pharma, for-profit hospitals, health management companies and insurance companies what in the world can the 'customer' the patient actually do?

The USA has the world's most expensive healthcare, 50% of all bankruptcies are the result of medical bills, yet is far down on the list for patient satisfaction, child mortality and lifespan. If healthcare were treated as a business, this would be unacceptable to Americans.

It may be more interesting to think of Bioethics in terms of patient relations and the such but, in reality, morality and ethics in the medical profession really comes down to MONEY.http://bartdz.blogspot.com/2005/03/how-does-usa-stack-up-worldwide.html

The anonymous poster of 1/2/07 said that the vast majority of doctors are arrogant jerks. I agree that some are, but not the vast majority. I think that the same distrust people have for the police today, is being expressed by patients towards their physicians. The reason, I believe, is fear. The police officer has dealt with criminals for so long, they only trust each other.

Physicians have dealt with insurance carriers who would rather see the patient die than pay for a new treatment. They have seen their malpractice insurance climb, and they have even seen some of their own persued by the DEA. How can we blame them for only trusting each other?

Patients, have heard so many horror stories of impaired physicians, or incompetent ones, through the media and the internet, that some would rather take the advice of a lay person, than go to a doctor.

I'm old enough to remember when my mother, a widow with two children, two jobs, and going to night school went in search of a doctor. This was in the mid-fifties, and she had heard of him through word of mouth. He was just closing his office, but he came to see me. He took me to the hospital in a cab, because my mother could only afford the subway. The doctors in the ER acted like he was royalty. I was diagnosed with Polio. It turned out to be a mild case, but he sat with my mother and I the entire night.

He became our doctor, a doctor that everyone in the neighborhood knew and loved. We knew his family, and that he liked rum and coke and hated pizza. We saw him as a man, who happened to be a physician. We also knew why the ER docs treated him like royalty. He was the chief of internal medicine at that hospital.

I don't think our health system is the biggest problem we have. I think that we, as a society, have become so frightened, and angry at each other, that we have forgotten that a highly educated person is as prone to making a mistake as the rest of us; we have forgotten how to appologize when we make a mistake, and the most important thing we have forgotten is how to forgive each other.

"First, we should think about trade in doctors like we think about trade in manufactured goods....

First, the rules were quite deliberately designed to restrict the number of foreign doctors (the NYT and Post both had several articles on this point in the mid-nineties, cited in The Conservative Nanny State). Second, the federal government, and many state and local governments have restrictions and even outright bans on employing foreign doctors. Governments are large employers of doctors.

Finally, it is illegal to hire a foreign doctor because they are willing to work for a lower wage than a native born doctor. While Wal-Mart is free to buy its toys and clothes from whoever sells them at the lowest price, an employer is supposed to certify that they were unable to find a U.S. citizen or green cardholder for a position before they are allowed to hire a foreigner. While this rule is not tightly enforced, it certainly precludes the possibility of a Wal-Mart Hospital that quite explicitly seeks out the lowest cost doctors from anywhere in the world. The government would throw the operators of Wal-Mart Hospital in jail. That’s because doctors have more political power than the workers who make toys or clothes."

----------------I hear so many doctors complaining about their jobs as if they expected to, after a handful of years in school, be spoon-fed a lifetime of easy work for high pay. One of the newly-minted doctors on this thread actually complained about his patients.

Goodness gracious. Patients are your customers. They are the only reason you have a job. Being a doctor is a retail profession and you cannot be in it if you hate customers. Too many doctors really believe, deep down in their hearts, that they are so important and so wonderful that their customers should be bowing and scraping before them.

That's the kind of attitude that will get you sued and sued often. If you anger your customer, regardless of the outcome of your care, you are much more likely to be sued.

IMO the only answer to problem doctors is good old American capitalism. Even when it comes from abroad. We are supposedly built on competition so is it any wonder that a profession built and run as a monopoly has sunk to this level?

Just when you think the healthcare system is horrendous, it gets worse. Here's another reason to avoid all doctors completely. They will supply your private medical records to anyone they please.

Why do I hate doctors? Well, in a word, respect, or rather lack thereof. Doctors as a whole need to understand that just because the person sitting in front of you does not have an MD, that does not mean they are not intelligent, astute, or capable of understanding their own bodies or medical dilemmas. It is not that I am not as intelligent, I just chose a different profession.

In addition, I understand my own body and when I feel pain, illness, etc. If I tell you that this headache, stomachache, etc is different from the previous ailments, please do not assume that I lying or just don't understand my own body. Believe me, I have spent a great deal more time with my body than you have.

Now, my ultimate pet peeve is a dismissive attitude. I ask, at the very least, for doctors to follow standard protocol of service when assessing an ailment. I have, many times, been diagnosed without even a proper examination. At least take the time to find out what my symptoms are before offering a diagnosis.

Lastly, the mindset of a doctor should not be that the person in front of you is just a whiner, complainer, etc. I doubt too many people love going to the doctor and you must go in with the mindset that if a person is there to see you, they truly are looking for relief from what ails them.

Now, that was quite a tirade and I offer my past history as explanation for my feelings. In fact, I have a few cases. I had torn cartilage in my knee and was told it was psychosymptomatic. An MRI by another doctor proved it to be torn cartilage and it was repaired. Another one. I experienced gallbladder failure and upon presenting at the ER, they failed to do any tests other than a urinanlysis and proceeded to tell me it was gas. This one nearly killed me as the gallbladder then went gangrene by the time it was found. Lastly, I had my wisdom teeth pulled and experienced severe muscle spasms in my jaw and pain. I was accused of searching for pain pills without the offending doctor ever looking into my mouth to see if there was an actual problem. Turned out I had exposed jaw bone and had to get another surgery which resulted in quite a bit of bone loss due to dead bone.

Now, let me say this last thing. Each of those three experiences account for each and every one of my ailments that I have EVER had to undergo specialized treatment for. In other words, there was a 100% complete failure of diagnosis due to simple failure to listen and believe the patient. I would fire my employees in a heartbeat for such incompetence.

I Hate Doctors Because:First may I stir up things by saying I wish all foreign Doctors would go home, to their native country. They are needed there and their foreign accent which is so hard to understand, is not needed here in the states. The whole concept of Doctors offices has gotten out of hand. People in the office hate you. You are work for them. I had an office worker to argue me down my military ID was just an insurance card. The cost of visiting a Doctor, even with insurance is outrageous. Nothing there, not even my life is worth the prices they charge for an office visit. I went to a cardiologist in Louisiana the other day and an office visit was 789.00 dollars. After I had all my test completed and they called me back to review my test, I was called back by the nurse. She had to weigh me, for what I don't know. In the room, she had to ask about my pregnancies, all my surgeries, (None in the past week), all about my period, when did I last have one and was it heavy or light, just to get the results of my test. To say the least, I came unglued. The Doctor came in and jumped me because my blood pressure was out of sight, who would imagine. In the process I crusifed this foreign person and promised myselt that I would die before I was found in his office again. When I got the tricare bill I thought I would die of heart failure then. It will take me years to pay the difference to this idiot that calls himself a cardiologist. Now after I have said all of the above, the man never did one single thing to help me are to medicate me. I simply have been raped while he drives off in his gold Mercedes. After reading this, can any one figure out what is wrong with the medical society, especially foreign Doctors. Congress cannot do anytnhing about this situation because of lobbiest for the American Medical Association and the Pharmaceutal Companys. However, you can, stay away from these guys. When their Mercedes payment gets behind, maybe they will find another line of work. This was the fourth specalist in a row that did me like I just explained. I will die before I see another one.

I don't hate all doctors. I'm sure like anyone else, most of you got into health care to help people. Keep doing that. My pastor escribes grace as looking beyond the fault and seeing the need. Most of the comments here come from years of frustration about personal vitality, and are not personally directed at any of you.

My comments aren't directed at you. I've worked in politics. You can't please the public 100% of the time,and we do have to take personal responsibility.

So while I don't hate all doctors, I hate, hate, hate our health care system. You know why people turn to alternative medicine, although the evidence may be lacking? Becausse they get treated like a human being. The desire to be treated like a human being is part of the practice of medicine. Nobody wants that more than when they are ill.

I hate that most of my doctors don't listen to me, the patient, even though it is my body, and often I'm right.

I hate that I don't get enough time with my doctor.

I hate the dismissive attitudes of health care professionals in general.

I hate the high costs of health care.

I hate the elitism that exists within the health care profession and the dismissal of all alternative medicine.

I hate the perscription drug industry.

I hate that we blame the patient rather than figure what is going on with the person.

I’m not a scientist, nor a doctor, but I have to say given the state of our health care system, I’m unlikely to trust either. I have little confidence in our medical system to do much more than provide us with souped up expensive placebos that wind up leaving us all dependent upon medication that we need but can’t afford, or can’t afford and don’t need.

In the past two years I’ve seen a sister misdiagnosed who had Chron’s disease, my best friend who had an infected Gall Bladder sent back home from emergency with advil (soon after it burst), been misdaignosed after having heart palpitations, and seen a friend misdaignosed with massive throat infection after coming in with 105 degree fever. How those brilliant folks missed that one, I’ll never know.

I went in complaining of sharp pain in my ovary, and I had to fight to get them to even do a Pap. In fact, I was told that I didn’t need a Pap, or an ultrasound, which I eventually got. Further proof that although I appreciate my health care, HMO’s are like the Micky D’s of medicine.

Hence my stance on the Airborne debate. While you all may have confidence in your doctor, I have MORE confidence in a teacher. Maybe Airborne works, maybe it is just the mind healing itself. The question most people ask at the end of the day is “Will it harm me” and “Does it work?”

Works for me. I don’t need anything else. Not all home remedies work, but consider this: you don’t have to be brilliant to find a home remedy that does.

With all the gains in modern medicine, nobody’s found the cure for the common cold or flu. You know what they tell us to do? Use grandmama’s remedies.

I don't know what can change the paradigm here, but I do know that I want to have a day where I go to a doctor that listens to me, treats me as a person, and with professionalism.

Lying to prevent malpractice when a heartfelt, humble apology would do? Then it goes too far. Exactly how does an apology protect, legally, against a suit? That's utter nonsense and yet another backwards step in the entire health care crisis. We are fast approaching a time IMO when the general public will go to war against the health care system.

"In some cases, patients fall victim to unavoidable complications, in other cases there truly was an error. Initially, Kenney wasn't given the whole story — typical of many cases where a serious medical complication has occurred.

"They told me I had an allergic reaction to anesthesia, which I knew was an outright lie," Kenney said....

Twenty-nine states now have laws that protect doctors from lawsuits when they say they're sorry."

We can no longer afford health care.-------"In 2004 (the latest year data are available), total national health expenditures rose 7.9 percent -- over three times the rate of inflation (1). Total spending was $1.9 TRILLION in 2004, or $6,280 per person (1). Total health care spending represented 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

U.S. health care spending is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4 TRILLION in 2015, or 20 percent of GDP (2).

In 2006, employer health insurance premiums increased by 7.7 percent - two times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $11,500. The annual premium for single coverage averaged over $4,200 (3)."http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

People, including the insured, are putting costs which are not covered onto their credit cards. Does it make any sense for people to work all their lives in order to cover their medical bills?

We have to have single-payer health care via Medicare. It is a simple idea, take away the age restriction so that Medicare will cover all Americans. Outlaw private insurance companies which are very inefficient and whose main jobs are to hike premiums, deny care and make profits. This could be done by the Bush administration and Congress TOMORROW.

A paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in a gutter in skid row in Los Angeles on Thursday after allegedly being dumped in the street by a Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center van, police said....

The case comes three months after the L.A. city attorney's office filed the first indictment for homeless dumping against Kaiser Permanente. The charges stem from an incident earlier last year when a 63-year-old patient from Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower medical center was videotaped as she stepped from a taxi in gown and socks and then wandered the streets of skid row.

Los Angeles officials have accused more than a dozen hospitals, as well as some outside law enforcement agencies, of dumping patients and criminals on downtown's troubled skid row. The city attorney's office said it was considering filing charges against several other medical facilities....

LATimes.com February 9. 2007

-------------What kind of people are we?

This is horrible. This is a nightmare but how often does this happen.

The USA is the most expensive health care in the world and it isn't the best, not by far. Horrific.

I have never encountered a doctor who has treated me or any of my loved ones with anything more benevolent than aloof dismissal of their agony. This has been the case when an entire room of loved ones (my boyfriend's father's wife and children) were all distraught and crying about how much pain he (let's call him K) was in (the man had Stage IV liver cancer). The doctor coldly said, "I am sorry he is suffering ('he' was lying in the bed; the doctor couldn't even address him in the second person) but to give him more pain medication would risk his life and therefore endanger my license and this hospital's." Minutes later, a neurologist came in and proceeded to try to give a verbal test to a man moaning in agony. The doctor not only made fun of K's pain, imitating him, but also made fun of his tumor-addled responses to the questions (the cancer had metastatized to his brain) and said, cruelly, "I told you they shouldn't give him so much Vicodin" (that's right: these doctors refused to give my in law anything stronger than Vicodin for his stage IV cancer. When we decided to move him to a hospice where he could get pain relief, they ridiculed our decision. One doctor even said, "I guess you want your father to die," to my boyfriend. He had already been through multiple rounds of chemo that cost him his appetite, energy, hair, love of life, dignity, and the will to live. With a prognosis of days to weeks, these doctors were arguing for a last-ditch surgery which they ADMITTED would probably not give him much more than another few weeks and would definitely cause even more pain.

In my experience, doctors care little about quality of life and care far more about prolonging life, no matter how miserable that life is. They also would prefer to have patients suffer miserably than to prescribe adequate doses of narcotics based on their War on Drugs mindset. To them, it is better that a patient be in agony--even die in agony--than receive the proper medication if it happens to be a triplicate narcotic.

Every doctor I've ever known sees his/her patients as no more than broken down machines. I've even heard them say, "Hmmm, this is interesting," in situations where only a coldhearted sadist would find the circumstances anything other than tragic. They also have no sympathy for the families of the sick, who are losing the person they care about most in the world. They do nothing to make the families of the patient or the patient himself feel better. They often don't even crack a smile or offer a single word of comfort or sympathy.

For those that defend doctors' personalities with the statement "They have to be this way," I'd suggest that they recall the personality of their pediatrician, their child's pediatrician, or their obstetrician. None of these specialists seem to have their hearts removed upon graduation fromm medical school, so why should the hematologists, oncologists, and internal medicine specialists have to act like evil robots?

I have not been to a doctor since my first year at an East Coast Ivy League school, where I developed frostbite (unaccustomed to the weather as a Southern Californian). I am terrified of them; they way they offer no reassurance even if you are there for a simple check-up. Like the first poster, I too attended law school, but have no desire to go into medical malpractice.

This is because I believe that the problem is way deeper than one's practice; I think it begins with attitudes inculcated into doctors during medical school and residencies. Two approaches may improve the problem slightly: emotional tests before and after medical school, a rigorous system of feedback from patients on the doctor's ability to act human, or courses designed to ensure that doctors keep their humanity as they go through medical school and their residency. At worst, the cold fishes should be assigned to professions where they have little contact with patients or particularly not patients who are dying and in severe pain (the callous resident should be barred from becoming an oncologist and should be steered to podiatry instead).

Finally, I do not believe that I am one of the few who have negative opinions of doctors' treatments of patients. I recently did a search to find doctor reviews on line in order to perhaps find a female general practitioner in my area who was reveiwed as warm and kind, or at least given several positive numerical reviews. I could not find a single one. I did, however (as I mentioned before) found many "warm" "sympathetic" and "approachable" pediatricians, obstetricians, and plastic surgeons. This problem is far more widespread than the few 'doctor haters' who are assumed to be biased idiots.

Yes I hate doctors, but I have been trying very hard not to focus too much energy there because I am still trying to recover my life and I don’t want my hatred/negative energy toward doctors to keep me from that. I am a former pediatric trauma RN. I had a long very mysterious illness in which I was told was in my head. I won’t get into all the destruction that was done to my body but suffice it to say I was nearly killed over the course of 10+ years by doctors and their medication. I later found I had a treatable infection, AND that I had chronic fatigue syndrome. Had I been treated for what I really had initially it would have taken a few years out of my life but not nearly 20 that it did. During my years of working as an ICU trauma nurse I was always concerned & stressed about how we flogged the patients for the sake of letting the doctors do procedures or experiment with medications. During my years of illness I saw hundreds of other patients futilely attempting to get help but only getting more and more medicated. What doctors DON’T do at all is help get to the root of the problem. They are almost surgically attached to their prescription pads, they can’t diagnose by listening to symptoms. If they can’t see something in a lab test or on a MRI for example then it doesn’t exist and it’s in the patient’s head. They take the cheap way out and the path of least resistance. When they do find they have made a mistake they blow it off by saying the patient ‘fell through the cracks,” it’s never their fault. When a colleague makes a mistake that is undeniable they all rush to cover it up. I admit I have been party to this for things surgeons and other MDs did which caused critical illness and complications in children. I’m ashamed of this.

I understand very well now what I need to do to stay well and out of the doctor’s office for the rest of my life. I’m writing a book how to do this and how to recover from chronic illness, things doctors will never tell you because they do not know; they ONLY know cutting, burning and poisoning. I pray to God that I don’t get in any serious accidents because being treated by medicine and surgery is ultimately dehumanizing and frankly if I get cancer or any other terminal illness I will just say good bye world and hello God. My QOL now depends on everything I do to stay very healthy and doctors are not a part of that AT ALL. I know now how to keep my immune system healthy, stay away from doctors and the foreign health killing chemicals they prescribe. I plan on living the rest of my life medication and doctor free.

It’s not a secret either that doctors are married to big pharmaceuticals. I for one am not supporting either of you any more.

I was the above poster, I forgot to add that I have ZERO desire to work in the field of nursing, doling out chemicals to people. SHAME on doctors they have gone down the wrong road and gone way too far. I know one doctor who has very few patients on medications, he treats the root of the problem (body, mind, spirit). If one doctor is doing it so successfully why can't others?

It's sad but true. Patients must know their legal rights before interacting with anyone in the medical profession.

Do not sign anything without fully understanding what you are signing no matter how much coercion you are subjected to. If you do not understand something, note it in writing and take exception to it before you sign the document.

Do not assume that charts or bills or diagnoses are correct. In fact, assume that they are all wrong and work from there.

Make sure you have an advocate with you whenever you can, be it a trusted friend, family member or attorney. Do not trust anyone, do not trust anything be very skeptical. Demand everything in writing, demand a copy of everything and follow up diligently until you receive all the information you require.

Do not take no for an answer. Do everything in writing.

Assume, again, that everything is wrong and that mistakes are legion. There is precious little serious oversight into this profession which is amazing since it is one profession that can wound you, kill you or otherwise ruin your life.

It is a sad state of affairs but, from personal experience, I will state that I do not trust this profession and never will for as long as I live. IMO, the only hope for improvement is for we the customer to demand that it become trustworthy and responsible.

If people hate doctors, what word would describe how people feel about lawyers? The nice thing for doctors is that they know that lawyers will always be more despised than they are and for very good reason.

Maybe you can get a lawyer to start a, "I despise the lowlife scum that lawyers are" blog and then compare the results. :)

I think most patients "hate" their doctors but "respect" their education. This would not be the case if patients actually did comparisons between medical programs and other forms of education. Medical programs lack many subjects that would put the individual's capability to the test, like high mathematics or high physics for example.

Most of the doctors I know are stupid, lazy, undeservedly full of themselves and just plain ignorant to reality. In truth, doctors do very little for the field of medicine. Scientists and engineers do far more good in medicine then the doctor practitioner.

In short, doctors get WAY TOO MUCH credit and WAY TOO MUCH pay. This is really only the case because of tradition and the ignorance of the general public. It also has a lot to do with capatilism.

These are all facts. Another fact is that on average, one for one, engineers and physicists are much more intelligent than doctors.

Having my wife refused for prenatal care by every OB GYN in a 100 mile radius due to concerns of "liability" gives me the right to hate both doctors and lawyers. Doctors being cold, afraid and mostly uncaring humans. While greedy lawyers that jump on every malpractice claim (founded on fact or not)seem to be the reason that doctors are so afraid to help. But they don't suffer, we do.

I hate doctors for a reason that does not have to do with my personal health care with them. I hate them because I have to work with them. I manage a large organization clinic with 4 different specialties. I am a Registered Nurse. I have been working in the nursing field for 10 years. Before managing, I worked on a labor/delivery floor. The first thing my mother told me when I graduated was "treat every patient like you would want your family member treated". I hold that very dear to heart and like to think that was how I always treated my patients. Now that I'm a manager, I deal with nursing staff and physicians. I love my job because I can teach and guide nurses. I hate my job because I have to deal with pompous physicians. Most of the doctors I deal with do think they are better than others. Every so often, I'll come across a doctor who is genuinely caring, but that isn't very often.I get chewed out on a weekly basis from a certain doctor. I am told that is just the way he is. If I ever chewed out my nursing staff like that, I would be fired. Yes, part of this is the administration I work for. But how did society let it get this far? I would never refer anyone in my family to this particular doctor. If patients saw how some doctors treat their staff members, people would be afraid to go to them.I seen surgeons throw instruments across the surgical room. They think that is the way to get people to listen to them.Doctors are bullies. They think that whatever they do, people will have to listen too. I'm so fed up with it that I wish I never would have gone into the health care field. Luckily, I have options and I plan on getting out of it.

I truly have a reason to hate doctors. When I was a teenager I had a deviated septum that caused me mild congestion problems seasonally but the doctor told me I needed to get it fixed.

He went and fixed it but removed most of my turbinates. This is tissue in the nose. I began getting symptoms of what is called Empty Nose Syndrome about a year later. Since the surgery I've gone to countless doctors which removed more of the tissue exacerbating my ENS symptoms. Finally after 15 years I diagnosed myself based on my symptoms and there is not cure.

Now because over 8 doctors misdiagnosed me and 3 doctors surgically removed part of my turbinates I am stuck with a serious nasal disease in which I am almost debilitated because the mistakes of several horrible doctors.

I was not able to sue because Turbinectomies are still considered standard procedure for nasal congestion. Now I have constant shortness of breath, bone dry nose, nasal pain, headaches, and inability to sleep, and constant stuffy nose for the rest of my life. Thanks to all you horrible doctors.

I am a doctor and I am sickened by this diatribe of nonsense and ungratefullness that I am reading in this comments section. It's 9:00pm and I am getting ready to start yet another night shift in the ER of the hospital in which I work. I read you all complaining and whinging that doctors 'get paid too much' and that we are 'lazy' - obviously you have no idea of the amount of sacrifice that we give to the profession of caring for the public's health. As a hospital resident, I barely see my husband, I have worked 6 weekends of the last 10, I often work over 70 hours per week. We hardly ever get breaks. True, I get paid well, but if you go per hour I don't get paid much more than say, a teacher. The only, and I mean the ONLY reason we get paid the amount we do is due to the amount of OVERTIME we do. And much of that goes unpaid! You forget that the reason most doctors go into the profession is because they care about the patients. Why else would we do it? The glory? Your comments in this blog certainly blow that theory out of the water. The money? As I said before, hour for hour we don't get paid much. No, the reason we do it is to help people. However the more I hear patients complaining the less and less I give a shit. The amount of times I see patients come into 'emergency' with NON EMERGENCY problems eg. a stubbed toe which they got 10 DAYS AGO or chronic back pain is ridiculous. And then to be abused about the fact that they have been waiting in the waiting room for hours when we have been busy saving someone's life who actually HAS a problem that can't be looked after by the local doctor... don't even get me started. You are all pathetic. Have a little respect for the people who just might save your lives.

Anonymous...(there's a surprise) leaves us with the doctors creed...."You are all pathetic." Could that be because if non doctors don't agree....they must be pathetic.

Gee.....Why do I have no respect for physicians....

Could it be that my mother was misdiagnosed while she had Chrones disease (sp) and the genuis put her on a lactose diet? This progressed her disease ten years in one...Was it the genuis that "fixed" her jaw malady by removing all of her teeth...or the docor that said that, no it's not cancer, you have Pnemonia...while he was looking at year old X ray instead of the current one...

Could it be the some of the treatment my wife has had with physicians?

The pervert that told her to go ahead and undress, while he sat there, alone...(she wisely left)

The time right after my first son was conceived, the doctor pulled the umlical cord to hurry expulsion and tore it...While I was holding my wifes hand she was half sitting forward screaming bloody murder...and suddenly she froze in place....Eyes open dead cold stare. I thought she died right there...They told me to leave NOW...I wandered arpound for over an hour as a 19 yr old father wondering how I was going to raise my son alone...When I finally was sought out I was informed she had to have a DNC to remove the remaining portions not RIPPED out and that now she could not breast feed, to add injury to that they kept the baby from her for 12 hrs.

Or..The female GYN that improperly did something with a speculum causing my wife to jerk so hard she could not walk out of the office...apparently I was supposed to just accept this as normal procedure because my response to this offense got her released from any further care (by letter- as if she would return)...Years later she has had a fusion surgery...I suspect caused by this incompetent, arrogant fool...Trying to seek help to get better from this early on only mmet with resistance by other doctors, protecting their own.

Or could it be ....

My dentist that filled what he though "could become" a cavity(never had a problem x ray was negative ), five years later it cracked and I had to have it capped, but they took it too low and the next four caps would not stasy either, finally it became infected and I had to remove a tooth that should have been left alone.

Could it be the vascular surgeon that performed my vasectomy...

Proving a point to me about how doctors are not to be doubted, but patients really don't know anything) After repeatedly injecting my scrotum and scaping, asking me if I couild feel it...I kept saying yes..but after the third time he responded that it was impossible and sliced my non-numb scrotum anyway!

Or could it be..

The misdiagnosed DVT? my general (the only healer I have ever had the fortune of being treated by) had the right diagnosis, but this narcissist decided without utilizing (THAT is unnecessary) a Dopler survey that because I was A) Male B)not on hormone pills C) only 30...the seven inch clot did not exist...The survey I forced revealed it.

I don't hate them...I just will not under any circumstances trust they are out for my good before they are out to protect themselves. I know I must be on my guard, that I must ask too many questions and that if I just follow their directions, I am just setting myself up for a serious problem, they will adamantly deny.

If you keep calling a dog over and every time he comes, you kick him, he learns not to respond (trust).

Eddie, I agree all patients should be "on guard" in their experiences with their physician in the doctor's office and when the patient is within the hospital. (As I have repeatedly stated on various postings.) Since the doctor-patient experience is based on human behavior on both sides, errors from either party is always possible. In these days where the doctor's time with the patient is limited and at times attention is distracted, errors of one sort or another can be anticipated. Errors occuring in the hospital is even more likely where issues of miscommunication between various healthcare workers can lead to medical mistakes.

So.. my advice to all patients is, if possible, come to your doctor awake and alert. The elderly who may not hear or see well or have a poor memory should bring along someone to the office to monitor. If the patient gives permission for that individual to be present, there should be no reason for the doctor to object. If you have questions about what is going on you should be able to ask your doctor to explain. Don't take things for granted especially if things don't seem right to you. Let your doctor know. After all, it is your body. ..Maurice.

Writing from the perspective of a family doctor, I would like to give a little perspective from the "otherside".

What we have to offer at a clinic visit basically boils down to the following. There are no other magic tricks on the bag other than this.(i)Our opinion on diagnosis (ii)Empathic listening and/or referral to counselling with a therapist(iii)A prescription of some sort(iv)A minor procedure of some sort such as a cortisone injection or cutting out an ingrown toenail (for PCPs) or a major procedure (for surgeons)(v)A referral of some sort to a specialist or physical therapist. (vi)Some sort of advice on stretching or exercises. (vii)Some sort of advice on healthy diet, quitting smoking, safe sex etc. (viii)A test of some kind-MRI, CT, xray, blood test

It might be good to for patient's to know this ahead of time so there isnt some unrealistic expectation of something else we can do. If surgery and medications are not desired, it might seem there is precious little I can do except listen. As nice as that sounds, and I am more than glad to do it, I have seen very few patients satisfied with just me listening to them. I could order all manner of tests but at the end of the day the menu will be either nothing, physical therapy or exercises, diet change, weight loss, medication or surgery. Maybe if you know what you are getting into then there is less frustration afterwards? How about the patient being more flexible and expecting less testing, so we can keep costs under control? If TV medicine is a barometer for subconscious expectations, every clinic visit will be followed up with a multispecialty panel review , touching base with the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins if necessary,and by golly no ones going home until this problem gets fixed.

Lets apply this to a typically very frustrating problem such as chronic incurable abdominal pain for which there is ultimately no "fixable cause". Like it or not this problem and many other incurable, unexplainable things exist!!! You can either look at this as a reality of human existence or as a physical problem that medical science just hasnt caught up yet in diagnosing. If you believe the latter, what I have to say is that current medical knowledge is what it is and it changes slowly. If you can come up with a way to accelerate progress, be my guest and lead the way. It is amazing how frequently you can tell all the testing is going to lead to a dead end before you even start it. It starts with the office visit, and IME the patient never wants to hear anything about this being chronic or incurable there and then. So we run the blood tests which are negative, then the ultrasound or CT scan, then the GI consultant visit with the negative upper endoscopy and colonoscopy. Then the invariable request for a second opinion, often with the patient finding something in retrospect about that first consultant to vilify, because no doubt they must have got it wrong out of some failing of character. The second opinion always takes too long to happen, then the second opinion confirms the first one, and by then the patient is disillusioned, angry. The doctors are felt to be uncaring and "giving up" on that patient, and if 10 opinions give the same answer then the whole medical profession is unsympathetic. Unlike on "House", there was not that expected breakthrough "aha!" diagnosis leading to a fixable problem. FYI that just isn't real life. How much did this all cost, and how much good would if has it done? Would the patient have been happier if I just told them early on it was going to turn out this way?- I doubt it. So we have to try.

I have come to the conclusion that anger and mistrust is a reaction that will happen despite the best efforts. Perhaps it is human nature or a coping mechanism, and I think it happens in every country. Perhaps it is more prevalent in our culture than in others because there is always must be someone to blame rather than the philosophy that sometimes "crap happens". I think we as a people we are more fearful, distrustful and stressed than those in many other countries and might accept some personal responsibility for that.

Personally at this stage I am all for nationalizing medicine, rationing services so that the tremendous wastage (most of the spine MRI's done nowadays for example, which are an expensive way to reassure but rarely change treatment) is cut out, if at the end of the day this all costs less then great. Less tests, more house calls and more time at appointments. I have no idea if people would be happier with their medical care. At least it may be more affordable.

This is interesting because my last words to my PCP as he released me as a patient in the middle of a health crisis was "I hate doctors!! And I don't trust any of You!" The reason for releasing me was because I gave him a "Patients Bill of Rights" that had "The patient has a right to be taken seriously and respected" and he was offended. I'm an Electrical Engineer and if I said to my customers behind closed doors what doctors have said to me I would no longer have a job or be in my profession. If I kept poor records as my doctors have kept my place of business would of been shut down years ago. We have to follow UL, Ansi and ISO 9001 or we can no longer be in business. We are constantly audited and if we mess up we must fix it for free. Mess up where someone dies and we're unemployed. In fact when I bring my car to the shop, if they can't tell me whats wrong or fix the problem I don't have to pay. Yet I can't count the times doctors have seen me and not even listened to a word I said and sent me out of the office after my five minutes with a $180 office visit bill, no tests and no answers. Then the humiliating PAP test I told him I didn't need because I don't have a cervix (hysterectomy years ago) and am not sexually active since a doctor mutalated me. Yet he did it anyhow and them had his nurse call me to set up for another one when the lab sent it back because there were no cervical cells to test. There's times I've paid just to be insulted and laughed at only to go to another doctor with the same concerns and be told I had major heart problems that had been going on for years and have caused further damage to my body. If I were an electrical piece of equipment I would have legal recourse, it's much more difficult to even file a complaint on a doctor then it is on Black and Decker for your coffee pot malfunction. You have to have witnesses and doctors are very well versed in legalities. They know how to get you alone and close that door. They know you are a single parent with little ones and no family and they do indeed take advantage of that. In my profession I can't just dump a customer in the middle of a problem or because I screwed up and don't want to own it. In no other business can a person charge someone for something they never got or for giving them the wrong thing. And in no other business can a person charge their customers for rude comments and mistakes and then charge them again to fix the errors made or be able to throw the customer out half dead or emotionaly devistated. We as a country have allowed this particular business to not be monitored or accountable for what they do, say or write down. They are allowed to just do their own thing and I praise the small percentage who are actually able to get some restuitution for their pain and losses.

"The patient has a right to be taken seriously and respected"Absolutely! With regard to the patient being taken seriously, anything less means the doctor doesn't really care about the patient's history, complaints and concerns about his or her symptoms and illness. With regard to full respect, anything less means the doctor looks, examines the patient and responds to the patient as something less than a human being in need of help and relief. If there is no respect given to a patient there is no need to give anything further such as an attempt at the proper diagnosis and proper treatment. Shame, shame on any doctor that doesn't want to accept that notation of a patient's right to be treated with respect and treated seriously. ..Maurice.

I hate the way MDs treat my patients. I work in a pharmacy, and doctors just don't care about the same people I care about. I have patients with diabetes or manic depression, or extreme anxiety, and yet it takes the doctor 48-72 hours to call and tell us "Yes, this patient may have 3 more refills, Celexa 20mg T1D disp 30." It's not like the doctor has to get the patient's record -- if the patient has a new prescription, we don't have to call the doctor, and otherwise we tell the doctor what's already in our system. We have a woman who's gone without her citalopram for over a month because her doctor hasn't bothered to call back. Another doctor continually ignores our instructions and fills prescriptions out wrong, so we have a woman who hasn't tested her blood sugar in 6 days because she doesn't have any money and we can't bill medicare until he puts everything on it right. Doctors are constantly rushing nowhere and ignoring their patients.

I look at the healthcare establishment in a different way than most. As a qualifier I worked in Pre-Hospital EMS for almost 17 years. Much of that time was spent as a Paramedic in an urban setting. As both a provider and recipient of the health care system I have made several observations.

Popular Culture vs. Reality:

I started in EMS prior to the Rescue 911 phenomenon. Many of us remember the show with William Shatner hosting recreated ambulance runs. Prior to the show we received calls that were generally more acute in nature. Sure, we had the system abuser that needed attention, but patient acuity was high, possibly too high. Many people would not call for help until it was too late. After Rescue 911 this all changed. People were calling for every problem including minor lacerations, stubbed toes, and “I’m getting evicted from my apartment” calls. Call volumes increased dramatically. However, since the show did not portray an accurate representation of reality, people’s expectations were unrealistic. A case in point was that no one dies after 911 has been called. The producers tried to do it once, but the reaction was so negative ratings trumped reality. For more times that I can number on my appendages people were dumbfounded that even if we are called their loved one still dies.

One memorable incident was of a 60yo male that collapsed in his back yard while mowing his lawn. We were only 3 minutes away from the scene and arrived with fire right in front of us. The man was in asystole with no pulses present with good CPR. Going through the algorithm and the first line drugs netted no success, and we loaded and transported to the hospital. I attempted to prepare the wife for the probable outcome that her husband was not responding to our treatment, and that it was not a good sign. Her response was “nobody dies after calling 911”. Her husband had died before we arrived with a ruptured left ventricle, and the wife learned a painful lesson about reality. Unfortunately, it was now EMS’s fault for not living up to the expectations of popular culture. I see this theme running throughout this thread.

Using One Incident or Person to Condemn an Entire Group:

This thread is full of this type of generalizations. I have experienced good, bad and middle of the road in care by Physicians. I have also experienced the same things with patients as well. If I were to do the same as many posters here have done and “hated patients” in the same way how could I have performed my job? The answer is, not very well. All generalizations lead to the same end, anger and hate.

Patients as Consumers:

As far as I am concerned patients are not consumers. Yes, a service is rendered, but not necessarily what the patient demands. A consumer assumes no responsibility for a product purchased, such as a TV. If the TV breaks abnormally during normal use they are not held accountable. In healthcare a patient has a responsibility to themselves to work with someone to solve the issue at hand. Many times I performed procedures that caused my patient pain. I would never have done that to a customer since “the customer is always right”. Many years after I retired from being a paramedic due to an injury, I was a cardiac patient. After my close encounter of the cardiac kind I worked with those people to improve my condition. My original Cardiologist was an ass, having many of the characteristics described in this thread. I could either be an ass back or be an adult and find someone who wanted to work with me during my recovery. I chose the latter. Subsequently I have moved away from the area and can no longer see this physician and I dearly miss him.

Moral of the story, are you a customer or a partner in the patient doctor relationship? I prefer being a patient partner, and think it provides the best care. So, find someone who wants to be a partner with you in your health care.

Nationalize Healthcare:

If you dislike money being the driver for the system, then this path is not for you. Instead of you and your doctor making decisions about your care, national economics will make that decision. Need a total hip replacement? Your will be put on a waiting list and scheduled when the government can afford it. It will not matter that you have pain when you ambulate, so does everyone else in the queue. The only people that will receive prompt care will be those who can afford to get outside the system. Worse, resources could be allocated away from your group to another “more deserving”one. Be careful what you wish for the cure could have really bad side effects.

I could list even more, but I get too long winded as it stands. Suffice it to say that I do not hate doctors, even those that are asses. Making blanket statements only shows that people on both sides do not understand each other and have different expectations. The question is what do we do to bring understanding, expectations, communication, and all of the other issues in this thread to a shared reality?

First:The word hate should be used rarely in your vocabulary, and reserved only for truly evil individuals, not groups.

Second:A patient is not a consumer but a partner in the healthcare system. It is the patient’s responsibility to be a participant in the relationship with their doctor. If that can’t happen find one that will. Doctors need to be open to informed decision making.

Third:Patients are individuals, not numbers, or procedures, and their concerns should be addressed appropriately.

Fourth:All parties should be realistic about expectations and outcomes. TV and movies are not reality. All medications and procedures have side effects and untoward results. Patients need to understand that there are no guarantees in healthcare. Your body does not come with a warranty card saying it will do certain things at certain times. It is the responsibility of both the patient and doctor to understand and communicate the risks of any treatment.

Thanks Richard for your realistic perspective. I think your second point is one that many patients didn't consider or were unaware: patients as partners. Specifically, though patients may be consumers in the purchasing of healthcare in their aquisition of insurance, their relationship with their physician is one of a teammate and partner and not a consumer in the sense of a buyer of new cars or purchasing food in a supermarket. ..Maurice.

I think it's telling that Richard's example of how he maturely worked as a partner with a doctor was... firing his doctor. (And finding a new one.)

What if you don't have that luxury? What if it's theoretically possible, but technically difficult?

What if you are a psych patient and you aren't sure whether your doctor is being an ass or whether you are - so you put up with a doctor who is an ass? What if you are quite sure it's the doctor, but you are afraid of being labelled difficult if you say so?

What if you are a psych patient and your doctor shouts at you, accuses you of lying and malingering, and writes in your file that you are borderline? Even if no other doctor has proposed this hypothesis, you may feel so much pressure to be compliant (and prove that you aren't borderline) that you don't fire the doctor, but simply give up any attempt to get the help you need after this one person has given you a very difficult label for asking for it?

What if you go to the hospital complaining that you've been vomiting every day for months, and they give you an antacid and tell you to come back in three days if you aren't cured? What if you take the antacid as directed, but come back two days later in an ambulance with a perforated esophagus?

You'd feel pretty helpless, that's what. You'd be looking over at the gatekeepers who control access to health care and deny it to you. You'd be thinking that you've been good and followed the rules, and lost. Now if you change your strategy and stop following the rules they can (and will) continue to deny you access; but following the rules has already gotten you exactly nowhere.

You might be excused for feeling bitter. It's not so much about hating doctors because they are bad people. It's about hating the fact that they can make life-or-death decisions about you even if they are asses, or exhausted, or wrong, and you may have no means of appealing those decisions. Of course you might be lucky and get a doctor who treats you respectfully, who listens and who leaves the door open for doubt and who engages you as a capable partner in your own health care. (I'd say about 50% fall in this category.) Or you might be unlucky and get one of the other 50% who are simply not a match for you, for whatever reason. (Some of whom are not a match for anyone, realistically.)

Your life can depend on the luck of the draw. That awareness can create fear even when you know that 50% odds are actually pretty good. When you are a person who has no recourse (or who doesn't know what recourse they have), that becomes fear, anger and bitterness.

Alison, I am not sure that your 50%-50% estimation is correct but even if it is, I would suggest that you will have a better chance of getting a "better" doctor by getting physician referrals from people you know and who have had significant illnesses. Also, if you don't have a general physician (family medicine or internal medicine) get one. Don't go to a specialist first, if possible. Think about getting a physician who hasn't been out in practice for decades, but get a physician who has been in practice 8 or 10 years or even less years. That doctor will have a smaller case load and more time to spend with you and will have had fresher memory of broader diagnosis and treatment details. And talk to the doctor, for example, as to what he or she expects from patients. How doctors respond to unexpected and generalized questions will yield the patient information about how the doctor responds to other unexpected occurances. These are some suggestions regarding how to get a better percentage chance getting a doctor you will be comfortable and productive with and end up not hating. ..Maurice.

Oh, I have doctors I trust and don't hate. That's not the issue. Those are particular relationships, and we aren't talking about particular relationships here but about generalisations.

(I don't hate doctors.)

But I do become anxious when I think about having to see someone new, because I know there's an excellent chance I will see someone who will not only not address my presenting complaint, but also undermine my confidence in being able to advocate effectively for myself. It does happen, and I do hate having to worry about it happening when I am vulnerable.

The more urgent your situation, the more vulnerable you are and the less control you have over who you have to work with. So the advice to shop around is often inapplicable.

In particular, being told to shop around is difficult for a psych patient who is trying to get help precisely because they do not trust their own judgement.

*** *** ***I don't know about the 50-50 rule either: I made it up based on my personal experience. It seems to work for me. Note that I don't say that the 50% who make me feeel bad or disappointed about an encounter are incompetent asses; I said they weren't a match. Some smaller, unspecified proportion are incompetent asses, and you know who they are. I don't, though, and that's one of the things that makes shopping so tough.

Ok, and another thing that can be difficult about a very simple, routine encounter with a doctor is simply the fact that the doctor must not make any assumptions. I understand this, I understand the routine dialogues, but it doesn't make them any more fun. Simple, routine example of an exchange with a very nice doctor:

Doctor: Hello Alison, what brings you here today?

Alison: A urinary infection.

Doctor: What makes you think you have a urinary infection? [Perfectly legitimate and necessary question! But in any other context it would be somewhat insulting.]

Alison: I have a fever, I pee every 20 minutes, and it burns when I pee.

Doctor: That certainly sounds like a urinary infection. I'd like a urine sample to make sure.

[Alison provides urine sample, doctor confirms presence of bacteria.]

Doctor: How often do you get urinary infections?

Alison: I don't. This is the first time.

Doctor (genuinely puzzled): The first time? Then how did you know you had a urinary infection?

Alison (genuinely puzzled): Um, I have a fever, I have to pee every 20 minutes and it burns when I pee? What else would you like it to be?

Doctor: Oh.

*** *** ***No, I don't think I should be able to go to a pharmacy and buy myself OTC antibiotics any time I feel like it. Yes, I think the doctor was completely appropriate at all times. But still, the structure of the exchange made me feel belittled. As part of the transacton I needed to let the doctor tell me what I was experiencing and my intellectual capacity was presumed to be nonexistent. Fine, this is necessary, but that doesn't make it fun.

I don't think anyone should be surprised about the expression of hatred with respect to a relationship that with this basic structure. It even seems a little naive to expect anything else.

(Now, add a psych dimension to this very ordinary, familiar, undramatic transaction. Help!)

In your clinical narrative, what the doctor did wrong and can be upsetting for the patient is after confirming the diagnostic acumen of the patient, the doctor then turns around and then unnecessarily challenges that acumen. If the doctor had been thinking the patient was diagnostically alert because of experience with prior diagnosed urinary tract infections, the validity of the "first time" response could have been confirmed in other ways beyond using a question that is critical of the patient's knowledge. This narrative is a good example of physicians not considering how patients may respond to the words physician utter. ..Maurice.

I hate the doctors more than anything. When you go there and ask questions they don't answer they just go through with it. So now everytime my mom makes me a check up I get so scared and nervous that I can barely eat or sleep. They always have to prick my finger and never answer why they have to do this if I'm not on the wic plan. And they make fun of my weight telling me i'm fatter than most kids my age, but they don't give me anything to help that, they just sit there and be jerks. I wish there was a doctor out there who'd answer my questions and make me feel comfortable in that office...

I came upon this blog when I was doing an Internet search for empty nose syndrome (ENS). Apparently, someone had written that they had a "true" reason to hate doctors: because they have a very challenging iatrogenic condition. I, too, have empty nose syndrome (ENS), but unfortunately this sort of comment by someone suffering from it makes all of us sufferers look bad and, frankly, this comment is unappreciated.

Yes, ENS really is a tough condition, as I know firsthand. It can be a very serious and challenging condition. I know what it is like to not breathe normally out of my right nostril 24-7, having thick mucus, sleep problems, intolerance to cold air, and so forth. I have had two reconstructive surgeries with a very caring doctor in attempt to correct my condition. But I do not hate doctors. I wish I could reverse my decision to have undergone that turbinate surgery that resulted in ENS in 1997, and doctors do make mistakes, they are human, some have much better mannerisms than others, some are more knowledgeable in certain areas than others, but that sort of comment is not going to get doctors to want to care for us. In fact, a doctor responded to that post stating their own frustrations with people who are impatient and unreasonable for minor issues when they are spending hours trying to save someone’s life. And I am sure that happens often in medicine, as my brother-in-law is a family practice doctor who specializes in emergency medicine. I am pretty sure he has experienced some of the same things that doctor experienced with unappreciative patients. Mother Teresa once said, “People are often unreasonable and selfish. Love them anyway.” Did this ENS sufferer’s post help and garner receptiveness for empty nose syndrome? No! Fact is WE REALLY NEED HELP from them and we should be thankful that people are willing to devote their entire lives to help us in a caring profession, and especially for the doctors who are willing to listen to us and take up our cause. Because of my own experiences with ENS, and generally the confusion that is out there on empty nose, I have learned that “I” am the one who needs to take control of my health. It took me many years to figure this out, but only if I am going to be in charge of my health, make the right decisions, will the doctors be able to help me even better. I could have made the decision to be angry at my doctor (my nose is serious problem) and I admit I have a harder time trusting doctors now because of this, but neither of these attitudes will do anything for me; it will only hurt me, especially the anger. At this point in my life, that is what I have tried to do. In the process of writing a book, Having Nasal Surgery? Don’t You Become An Empty Nose Victim! I garnered endorsements from three well-known, supportive doctors who are passionate about raising awareness of ENS and helping people with empty nose. If I had written the other negative comments that the other ENS sufferer said, would these doctors have supported me? Absolutely not. If my book was a diatribe against doctors or implied in any way, shape or form that nose surgeries always lead to ENS, would I have had their support? Nope. I tried to be objective as possible, sharing my story, highlighting the dangers of an overly aggressive surgery, rating which surgeries are safer than others for those considering nose surgery, while acknowledging the good that can be done if we are to work together with doctors to help our condition. I am very thankful for my doctor who is doing my reconstructive surgery and the others who have spent time listening to my concerns.

Bottom line: doctors and patients need to join together as a united front, and comments like that from the ENS sufferer are unappreciated and do not help us who are suffering from this problem. I hope any doctor who read that person’s post will also read this post and recognize that that post does not speak for all of us; some of us with ENS very much do appreciate our doctors. Thank you for reading my comments. God bless all you doctors for your hard work and dedication to humanity.

I think there are more than one reason people have problems with their doctors, and not all are attributed to the doctors. Having said that, I have experienced my fair share of horrid doctors. Who are they? They are the ones that don't know how to listen to you. They think they are God. When you assume someone doesn't know their own body and can't possibly be qualified to be coming to you with a viable concern then you are endangering your patient. I know there are the people out there who take horrible care of their health and then expect a magic bullet that doens't exist. But don't assume anything about me until you've LISTENED to me. And yes, I know HMO's , ect have made the amount of time you have to listen to your patient difficult. Perhaps if you don't have time to listen at the appointment you could add more paperwork to the stack we fill out prior to seeing us, since most of the time lately I have been waiting 30 minutes past my appointment time, I might enjoy having something useful to do with my time.

I dont hate doctor in general, some are very good and listen however the majority do not.

Too many doctors blame the patient when their thearpy doesnt work and try to argue the patients out of their symtoms, tell them they have done test that they havnt, illegally keep their medical records from them and deny pain managment in order to push unnecessary procedures.

Many doctor do not have any critical thinking skill or emotional intelligence when it comes to patients suffering and accept no responsibity for the consequences of not listening to the patient and spend more time demonizing the patient to other doctors to protect their own sense of narcissism.

The good ones are hard to find and the bad ones are very good at deceiving you running up your insurence and leaving you worse than before.

While my kids were growing up, I had a pediatrician that I loved. He has been the exception. In general, I hate doctors. They do so much harm, and get angry if it's noticed.

I recall trying to get birth control...I had to have a pelvic exam, rectal exam and pap test. These are all humiliating, and when the patient is eighteen years old, they are not lifesaving. They are not even necessary. Yet, I had to take off all of my clothes and let one of them blackmail me into allowing him to spread my legs and inspect my vulva, then push a big metal toy into my vagina. After that, he pushed his fingers into my vagina, and then up my rectum, and then felt my breasts. None of these activities had anything to do with The Pill, but the Old Boys' Network called the AMA allowed the doctors to conduct this assault on me and millions of other women.

There is absolutely no connection between taking the pill and being forced to submit to this abuse. I objected and was told that I 'wasn't comfortable with my body' and had 'misplaced sexual issues'. Letting a stranger penetrate me for no benefit to me, but in order to get unrelated medication did not constitute discomfort with my body, it constituted discomfort with violation. But, the doctors continued to do it, purely for the sake of humiliating women. I hate doctors.

When my babies were born, my midwife wasn't available, so I had to put up with hospital staff doctors. The doctors brought in 1st and 2nd year residents who repeatedly pushed my legs apart to stare into my exposed vulva and shove their fingers into my vagina while saying "I'm going to examine you now...". They never asked, or gave me time to refuse, they only informed me that they would be shoving their fingers into me.

There was no question of need, the staff doctor had just examined me (over my protests) right in front of the resident. The resident would then repeat the action, over more protests. I kept saying "No, don't do that!" to which they would tell me to relax.

The repeated exams weren't about my baby or my health, they were to learn how a dialated cervix felt, a cervix that belonged to me.

The residents weren't delivering my baby, they were just 'practising', ignoring my screams.

I said no episiotomy. The doctors sliced my perenium while soothing me with 'oh, were just making the opening a little bigger". I said " you can't 'make the opening bigger' without hurting me!" and they sliced anyway.

It wasn't a difficult birth, no intervention was necessary but they used me like I was a silicone dummy. In the end, after stitching me up, the female resident got between my legs, touched my battered perenium, and said 'Good stitching.' She never asked for permission to touch me. When I snapped at her to leave my body alone, she said I'd feel better tomorrow.

I hate them.

In the end, I couldn't even sue them. No lawyer would take my case because the things that were done to me were 'routine'. Being violated, drugged and sliced were not routine to me. Hate, hate, hate.

My child is sixteen, and I still feel sick and defiled, thinking of those horrible people who repeated assaulted me during my birth.

Visitors to this thread might find an interesting series of 5 reasons which Dominic Carone, PhD finds he can't stand about doctors and their office when he goes for a visit. His reasons, and most likely yours too, can be found on his The MedFriendly Blog. ..Maurice.

aoxembmwaoxIt's really amazing that there are people who can read some of the horrendous stories people are posting here and then the worst thing they can find in those stories is that they contain "over-generalizations" about doctors. Never mind the suffering these people endured, never mind that in many cases their lives or the lives of loved ones were destroyed, never mind that in many cases, particularly with chronic pain patients, the destruction was not an accident but a deliberate act of medical sabotage aimed at some poor sap who displayed "drug-seeking behavior" whatever the hell that is. No, never mind those things, what's important here is that someone is saying bad things about doctors and that makes doctors upset and increases their sense of frustration at all you "ungrateful," "pathetic" "whingers" out there, and we mustn't have that. Let's just be quiet about abuses and pretend they don't exist. Better yet, whenever "mistakes" are made let's cover up those mistakes, deny everything, and try to discredit the patient in advance by making them out to be some kind of nut case, just in case they might want to file a complaint about it. "Pretaliation" is more effective than retaliation, but let's support websites that blacklist patients who have filed malpractice suits so we can deny them medical care. Let's do all these things, and then demand understanding and defend arrogant, dismissive, abusive behavior by doctors who like to play God when it comes to having authority over our lives, but suddenly devolve into poor, misunderstood, fallible humans who shouldn't be held responsible whenever they screw-up, because to err is human and all that. Especially not by losers like all you patients out there who refuse to take responsibility for your own lives and become active partners in your medical care. Let's just pretend that in a system where doctors have absolute authority, anyone can just walk into a doctor's office anywhere and become an "active participant" in his own medical care by demanding immediate treatment for his pain with narcotics. See how well that one works out in any doctor's office outside the borders of La-La Land.

I particularly love the argument by one poster here who suggests we should refrain from criticizing doctors for fear it will make all patients look bad. The very fact anyone needs to fear that speaks volumes about the realities of our system, and the power differential that exists between doctors and patients that are both the result of and the cause of the fear he expresses. It is our failure to properly criticize and reign in the abuses in our medical system that has allowed those abuses to proliferate and fester. Supplicating the gods and hopping on the patient-bashing bandwagon will not save you from those abuses.

The gist of most of these posts are that patients really don't have a right to complain or express their anger at the abuses they have suffered, because that is apparently much worse than the abuses themselves. Sorry to disagree, but I can't think of anything that could possibly be said on an internet medblog, no matter how inflammatory or how much of an overgeneralization it might be, that can compare to the reality of a single human being whose life has been destroyed by the medical profession and the suffering that person has had to endure because of it. The reality of years of pain, humiliation, loss and despair brought on by a case of malpractice, or by the kind of deliberate medical sabotage and denial of treatment people with chronic pain routinely experience, exponentially exceeds any minor annoyance some doctor might experience reading these comments. You might as well compare a nuke to a bonfire, the difference is that great. The fact that there are so many medical professionals here who have chimed in to criticize the manner in which some people have expressed their suffering rather than the system that caused that suffering says a lot about just how dehumanizing this system really is. Annoying doctors, it would seem, is a far greater sin that the destruction of millions of lives.

I have personally endured years of torture because of the lies some arrogant doctor wrote in my medical records at the VA. His lies have become my reality, and now no doctor in that system will touch me, and I cannot afford medical treatment outside the system. The other night a new woman came to my chronic pain group and told the story of how that same doctor had brutalized and abused her, albeit in a civilian hospital where he is also employed, and denied her pain treatment following a surgery that left her in excruciating pain. One of the nurses violated his orders and gave her pain treatment anyway—at least for her shift— but she continued to be denied treatment after that thanks to this thug and his lies. While she was telling her story, I found myself getting extremely angry, not just at him but at myself, for in some ways I felt personally responsible for what she went through, as I had failed to do everything in my power to get that creep removed from the medical profession. I hear stories like this all the time in my chronic pain support group, and I have yet to meet anyone with chronic pain who hasn't been abused in some way by the medical profession. Many, if not most, doctors abuse chronic pain patients like this all the time and they get away with it, and what is worse, all the "good doctors" look the other way and do nothing even though they are in a better position than anyone else to reign in their more amoral colleagues.

So yeah, sometimes when people express the kind of anger you see here their rhetoric tends to be a bit over the top. You can learn a lot from that if you have an open mind. If you don't, then you'd better start getting used to it because the internet has dropped the veil of silence forever, and the culture of cover-up that has protected bad doctors for decades is about to come to an end. I think the expression of anger here is positive, as it lets a certain kind of doctor know just what a low-life POS his patients feel he is when he abuses people like this. There is no better therapy for a malignant narcissist than a swift kick in the ego.

Dear Dr. Bernstein,Good for you, for opening up a forum for people to talk about this. Sorry, I don't have much respect for the medical establishment in general. There doesn't seem to be anything about an MD degree that indicates a competent physician, these days; it's pretty much hit and miss. People feel like the costs are too damn high, in terms of health and money, to be paying for crappy medical care. If I'm paying 100$ for a 10 minute visit and some antibiotics, that you can be damn well sure I expect my problem to get better, or at the very least, to learn something about it I couldn't get out of a home medical reference. Or I tell you what, if you can't make me better, give me laser eyes. Sorta like, "No, sorry, new kidneys are out of stock, but we do have these fine lazer eyes on sale." People say doctors are arrogant. It's not that we think doctors walk around playing "You're the Best Around" in their heads all the time because they SAVE people. No, being a doctor is like being in a gang. Doctors get jumped in during residency, working 54-hr shifts, then you get the weight of the medical establishment behind you, and then people give you respect, but they hate you too. You know why? Because when doctors screw up, or just aren't very good, it's a lot more important than when someone else in a service industry screws up. It's bound to give you a big head, and make you defensive. I suggest a lot of this will change soon. People will realize their lives aren't all that valuable. I mean, why spend all that money and effort saving a life when a new one's being popped out every 3 seconds? Even if an Einstein comes along, we could always just clone him. That's rational right? Cheaper to raise a baby for a year than to put someone on life support for a day.

I hate doctors. I hate every single arrogant, cash-bloated, preening peacock doctor out there who gets a hard-on in a denial of treatment situation due to a sick person's inability to pay the 600% mark-up price for their shitty service.

Every time I encounter a person who is a doctor outside of the health care setting, I am amazed at how much of my time is wasted having to listen to their heroic stories in which they play the starring roll.

I believe that there are good and bad doctors just like any profession. Unfortunately in the case of our health this can lead to death, horrible lifelong pain, and long or short term disability if you have a bad doctor.

I have experienced many wrong diagnoses and unnecessary surgery as a result of this. I live in lifelong pain because of this. While I believe that almost all doctors intentions are good, some are swayed by financial gain or pressure from hospitals to perform procedures or prescribe drugs that maximize their or their hospitals financial gains.

While I cannot change what has happenned to me, I recommend to patients everywhere before a surgery or significant treatment regimen is prescribed. You should get a second opinion from a doctor that does not know your current doctor. Often doctors opinions are wrong and there treatments or surgeries can cause permanent damage.

While I do not want to discredit the medical profession, when your health is at stake it is imperative to make the right decisions.

I have written a couple of health related books and every reference to seeing a doctor I wrote as your "medical provider." I did NOT write your "health care provider."

Unfortunately most people don't realize that the treatment they receive from doctors has NOTHING to do with health. Once you begin medications you enter what I call "the vortex" and you are lucky if you ever escape it.

If doctors stuck to healing broken bones and clearing up infections and referred almost everyone else to nutritionists, lifestyle coaches, and personal trainers there would be a lot more healthy people.

It's also unfortunate the degree of denial that doctors are in along with their patients. Medication and surgery never will be the answer to ill health. It will however continue to line the pockets of big pharm along with the MDs themselves.

Why don't doctors address lifestyle issues with thier patients? Oh yeah I forgot they don't have time, the insurance doesn't cover stuff like that, and most obviously, it's easier to write a prescription.

The medication they have out there right now is downright scary. I feel sorry for Britney Spears now because instead of someone taking her under their wing the shrinks (who are in the most denial BTW) are surely to really mess her up. She may as well kiss her life goodbye.

I can tell you why! If a doctor can't figure out what causes a symptom, it doesn't exist--it's all in the patients head. I'm pissed to day because the only neurology practice in my town won't bill allstate for an auto accident related injury and the self-pay is $445! I make $22K a year teaching. I know health insurance companies don't pay that big price. Doctors screw people who have to pay cash and charge sometimes twice as much. I guess somebody has to pay for his stupid marble floors.

In just about any other profession you can interview, hire, fire, etc. when you go to a doctor's office it's a crap shoot. If he or a she is an incompetent jerk you still have to pay them. Last year I spent $500 in copays and medications to a dermatologist to get rid of an itch y rash. All I got for my money was a biopsy scar on my elbow and empty pockets. My gp treated it for $12 worth of prednisone. Ahrg!

A degree doesn't make a doctor a god. Half the time drug reps are directing care so they can screw us with medications we don't need. The state of medicine in this country is abysmal. And nobody gives a crap who makes money from it.

I almost don't feel like posting after reading all the comments. My heart bleeds for the medical students and professionals working their legs off and still holding on to their ideals. My heart bleeds for the patients and their families, especially those who may have lost a loved one to a medical error. But some very good advice has been given by both pro and lay, and I hope those who read this blog will take it. Read beyond the frustrations on both sides and learn something. I have.

I thought I wanted to go into the medical profession years ago. I had a good brain, was at the top of my class, and in the beginning, started at a wonderful college, Stonybrook U. Back in the days of Skinner and Freud, I wanted to study physiological psycholgy. I believed the future was going to be what we have now; genetics, specific areas of the brain and their interaction and effects of chemical neurotransmitters. It was never to be. I, too, have a list.

1. Vision issues my whole life, but not until 37 was I almost casually informed that I had degenerative myopia. I had to bring it up to the doctor, and he had to agree based on his observations. Most of the drs I had seen from age 4 until then, just gave prescriptions for glasses and sent me on my way, never stopping to wonder why my vision continued to change after I turned 21. Some doctors gawked and didn't even have the equipment to properly measure my eyes. I didn't have glaucoma or cataracts, so my eyes are considered healthy. Today, even the insurance companies consider my eyes "healthy." Myopia is not a "disease" (think about how much we hear about macular degeneration), and no one seems to know about degenerative myopia, even though it is a global problem leading to blindness.

2. Back problems since I was in middle school. No one cared. I could stand straight, and therefore, there was nothing wrong. When I reached my mid thirties, I had a doctor continue to do xrays for a year, telling me nothing showed up. I fired him. Then I met the one doctor who I have on my list of doctors I would do anything for. He scheduled an MRI right away. Even the radiologist could not help but ask, had I been in a car accident (the answer was no). Three herniated lumbar disks, one impinging on the spinal cord. Later, two more were found in my neck. That wonderful doctor (unfortunately, out of private practice now) sent me for physical therapy for a year, and then surgery. I walk today because of him and that surgeon (2nd doctor on my great list), who was kind and considerate enough to gently tell me that I would be back due to my young age and severity of the problem.

3. I have yet to be formally diagnosed, but again, I believe I had to find my own answer. I believe I have recurrent shingles...without a rash. I have been through several doctors and specialists. I have been thought to have MS, lupus, lyme, rheumatoid arthritis, but never shingles. Even with a positive zoster test and one ER doctor who saw the remnants of a small rash (got to the ER in time). Without a rash, you don't have shingles, they all shout in stereo. I have since given up trying to convince anyone. I try to minimize the flare ups the best I can.

4. A broken leg that went undiagnosed for three weeks, with one doctor shouting at me that I was just trying to "get over," and that he was releasing me for work. After having to retain a lawyer, they went back for a fourth xray, and a poor radiologist (actually made them find him, so I could thank him) found my fractured tibia bone. Then I developed RSD-reflex sympathetic dystrophy. Never heard of it, but found it matched everything going on (again, here I go self-diagnosing-not supposed to do this). Still I had that wonderful gen dr. who always supported me. I went for a bone scan, and, of course, positive. Another year of very aggressive physical therapy, metal lined shoes, special socks and pain medication, and I walk today, no great distances (no more walkathons or bike-a-thons), but I walk.

5. Now my children. Both diagnosed with ADHD. I disagreed with both. It took years, but the first one now has been given a more accurate diagnosis of autism/Aspergers syndrome, and the second one, we now believe has low blood pressure. Not significant enough, mind you for a diagnosis of neurally mediated hypotension (according to one cardiologist), just "lowish." Lowish enough to remove the child from school, remove him from sports and his beloved junior firefighters group. No soccer, football, basketball or even amusement parks. He has been misdiagnosed as having seizures, real and psychogenic, panic attacks, malingering (I was accused of being a Munchausen Mom), and tossed about by the best in Baltimore. We now have to deal with the fact that years of this may have cause irreversible brain changes (his memory is shot) and caused a child who was on the honor roll in fourth grade to now be in special education with a 1-1 tutor at home. No real diagnosis even today.

There may be more, I just can't think of it right now. But, when I look back, my issues and maybe others stem from many doctors who could NOT be partnered with and a cultural predisposition toward "doctor knows best." My parents, though, intelligent, never questioned a single doctor during my youth. Considered rebellious, I used it to an advantage in my older years to ask questions and then confirm with research everything I was taught and told. At first this labelled me as the black sheep of the family, now, in our "enlightened" era of "doctor/patient partnership" I am considered a "wonderful" advocate and very pro-active. I am not sure that word existed before the 80s and 90s. In fact, I know that Aspergers syndrome was formally recognized in 1993, even though it had been identified way before then. My son was born in 1992. He was the only one with the diagnosis in his entire elementary school (not given until fourth grade), middle and now high school. I had to fight an entire school system (sometimes in a wheelchair) to help him.

What I have learned from this blog:

1. Learn to fight. I know you are sick. So was I. When you feel bad, take it easy. When you feel better, fight.2. There are rules, and those rules can be broken. The insurance companies like to keep things running like a clock. Life and health are not clocks. You have the right to proper care, whether that care is in or out of network. Keep a paper trail and learn the language to prove why you need to see someone you think will help you.3. When you get a good one, recommend him. Spread the word. When you get a bad one, do the same thing in the negative. Let people know, starting where the person practices, that there is a problem. This is where you must hold back the curses and speak calmly. It will go further than you think. I once had a chief of neurolgy reprimanded because his office took over a month to get a copy of a brain scan to me. I called the insurance company and followed up on my complaint. I don't hate him, but he needed to tighten it up. He did. 4.Learn, learn and learn some more. I don't care what your educational level is, find someone to explain it if you have to, but continue to learn everything you can about what is going on with your ailment. Research goes on all the time and the doctors do NOT have the time to read everything out of every journal. Bring a copy of something if you think it has something to do with your issue. You both might learn something.And finally,5. Remember your manners. I don't care if anyone is a blood-sucking, money-grubbing jerk, you DO NOT have to join them. I have walked/rolled out of some of the best offices in Baltimore, and I refuse to join the lower portion of society whether they have letters behind their name or not.

Thank you Dr. Bernstein, for this blog. You have made a difference just by allowing people to vent. How brave you are. I don't know many others in our so-called "service" industries opening themselves and their profession to this kind of interaction. Carry on.

judielise, thanks for telling about yourself and your life experiences regarding medical care and also thanks for your advice to my thread visitors. As I have promoted on other threads such as the ones on patient modesty, I have encouraged patients to speak up regarding their concerns to their healthcare providers. I realize it may be difficult to some or many because of the apparent "power" imbalance in the doctor-patient relationship. But speaking up is the only way physicians can become promptly aware of their behavior or that of their office or that of the profession, in general. The other advice I have given is for those patients who find systemic defects in the way medicine is practiced in general, such as examples of disregard for patient modesty issues, patients should come together in activist groups and make their views known to those organizations that set systemic practices, such as medical boards and medical organizations such as the American Medical Association.

Dr. Bernstein, I have to say I'm shocked that a Dr. started this blog. Good for you. I have absolutely no respect for the medical community as a whole. This blog means there might still be hope left!

It's been my observation that the biggest problem with the medical community (witch Drs. are guilty of the most) is they have all become so desensitized and jump to conclusions before they get to know a person. There seems to be a huge problem with alot of Drs. Take the comment from the Dr. on tuesday may 29, 07. Do Drs realize that is the attitude that people despise. If Drs just treated people with common courtesy,and respect as a fellow human being no matter their standing in life they would recieve the same back. At least 95% of the time any way. Their is a big difference between acting Professional and being a pompous*@^. I don't have unrealistic expectations when I go to a DR. I want to walk in, tell them whats wrong , get appropriate treatment and leave. End os story. I don't want to have a relationship, I don't need to be babied, I don't need someone to hold my hand. I just want treatment and to be on my merry little way. I cannont even tell you how many times I've been diagnosed with one mental condition or another only to keel over and need emergency surgery because I was not believed. I was even being treated once for an etopic pregnancy that ruptured. When I went to the Dr. and said my falopian tube ruptured. The Dr. didn't believe me. Well 5 hours later I was in emergency surgery in shock from blood loss. The funny thing is that the only mental condition I have is not having the ability to show pain or express awide range of emotions. Drs never believe what I say because I'm not expressive enough??? If they want histerics the should watch a couple of episodes of Jerry Spriger!! I'm tired of being misunderstood by DRs. How about giving people the benifit of the doubt. This is only 1 of 8 surgeries I was misdiagnosed for.

Thank you for this blog, Dr. Bernstein,Is it my imagination or do a lot of doctors dislike/hate their jobs--examining and treating sick/old people? A lot of them seem to enjoy the role of medical capitalists, running their bloated staffs rather than a friend to and healer of the sick. Because time is money, they give snap judgements unless some expensive test is involved. Anything out of their usual workload requires a 'specialist' who will require a whole series of test of his own. Their staffs with their cold, dismissive behavior seem to mirror and exaggerate the attitude of their chiefs.

The reason our feeling are so strong for or against doctors is because doctor's have to power to cure us or kill us. In 90% of cases doctors are well-meaning people that truly want to help us and do. In other cases doctor's care very little for patients and are trying to maximize their income. In even worse cases a doctor may simply be incompetent and kills and injures patients.

It is difficult to find a very good doctor just as it is difficult to find a very good mechanic. Unfortunately the mistakes of a doctor can end up killing or destroying our health not just damaging our cars. In my case a doctor botched a routine surgery that I found later on was not necessary. The end result is life-long pain and suffering. I can't say I hate doctor's but I definitely will never trust a doctor the same way I did before.

If and when I can find a doctor that can permanently cure me of the pain and suffering caused by my previous doctors. I will once again find a way to trust them again. Until then my pain is a constant reminder of how a doctor's incompetence damaged my health.

Thank you so much for taking in interest in trying to understand your patients frustration with Doctors. You are correct that we only come to see a doctor when we are in pain. When a doctor says that our pain is all in our head, and that we are not suffering it is frustrating. Naturally a doctor can not solve all of our problems and diagnose everything correctly. It is a process, however I find that many doctor's jump to surgery or harmful drug treatments too quickly causing even more harm.

Patients don't always understand that some problem cannot be fixed so easily. But I do think they would rather hear that than be given risky surgery or drugs that can make them worse.

I have a good understanding of how doctor's feel as my father is a doctor and complains profusely about his patients. I now have a better understanding of how a patient feels now that I have had some health issues that were caused by wrong diagnosis by several doctors.

In the end it is the patient that has to live with the pain and suffering of his or her illness and it is unfair for doctor's to dismiss or belittle a patient for researching his or her illness or diagnosis. I've learned this the hard way, that doctor's are not always correct and this holds huge long term consequences when they are wrong.

I hope that you and other doctor's understand that a patient's opinion is not questioning your knowledge or intelligence but trying to be a partner in his or her health. Thank you for listening.

Anonymous from today 3-3-2008, you wrote "I've learned this the hard way, that doctor's are not always correct and this holds huge long term consequences when they are wrong." I agree but I want everyone to know that another person lives with the anticipation of the long term consequences that the patient would be experiencing when a medical error is made--and that person is the doctor. I hope nobody thinks that there are no doctors who don't have long time recollections of their errors-- they learn by them but also they represent a sad and uncomfortable memory. ..Maurice.

That may be the case. Unfortunately I've found that my own doctor would not admit making a mistake when my very painful symptoms arose. After years of suffering I was diagnosed by two other doctors later on which confirmed that my problems were caused by a surgical mistake. Even my new doctor was disgusted with my previous doctor.

I feel that the trust I had in my doctor was shattered and his concerns over litigation outweighed his concern for my long term health. My father was sued twice over the course of his career and felt cheated by lawyers. I always took his side.

However, now I feel differently as many patients are not looking for money but some form of responsibility for the damage that has been done. I personally never sued my doctor as all I want to have is my health back. This unfortunately cannot be done at this time.

I realize there are always two sides to the story and for every person damaged by a doctor's mistake there are 10 people saved by a doctor's help.

For the young doctor's reading this blog, many of us have legitimate reasons to distrust you or even hate you. This is the nature of the business you are in. Your mistakes which most of you will make in your careers can kill us and maim us for life. Several recent articles in Forbes and the Wall Street Journals have estimated Doctor and Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. That does not even take into account people that live with lifelong damage.

Most of your intentions are good but mistakes happen and those will be our lives that are affected. Hopefully these mistakes will be at a minimum and hopefully will not ruin the lives of healthy people. For some of us unlucky ones we will tragically live knowing our doctor's failed us by ruining our quality of life or shortening our lives. Can you expect us NOT to think the world of you.

I also worked in the medical field as a trauma nurse and when I got sick my friends (nurses and doctors) disappeared. After over ten years of being “treated” by doctors I realized that if I didn’t do something I was going to die. I took myself out to a remote small town where I detoxed from all the medications that had been given to me (for healing? for symptom relief? for what?). A neurosurgeon in this very remote area told me, “You are paralyzed from the medications you have been on.” By then I couldn’t digest food, or walk, and I had substernal retractions….I WAS literally paralyzed in my GI tract and elsewhere.. It took me a year for the initial intensely painful and agonizing detox and 3 full years to completely detox. 20 years after I initially got sick and 6 years after retiring from doctors I am finally well and living life again.

My mom died around the time I was first ill…from malpractice, yes we got a settlement from the HMO. She was given a quinidine based medication and even though she went to see her cardiologist twice in a matter of days she was blown off. By the time she stroked out from quinidine induced thrombyocytopenia her platelets were 5!

I won another lawsuit from injuries sustained from the “care” of a doctor. But I’m done with trying to recover from doctors. The money they give you for a lifetime of misery isn’t near enough. Wake up doctors-- your actions need to be equal to the higher standard that you hold yourself to.

I’m with a number of posters here-- the way to stay healthy is to stay OUT of the doctor’s office.

And what is with all the TV commercials and magazine ads for pharmaceuticals? You doctors can’t convince me that you aren’t reaping the financial benefits of advertising all that poison.

I was the above poster, I meant to write intercostal retractions. I composed that after a 14 hour work day, hours I am working to build my business after years of being unable to work. Please make that correction. thanks.

I am a nurse who hates doctors because 90 per cent of the ones I deal with are rude, pompous, arrogant. Whatever mood they are in for the day, we are the ones they get to take it out on. If they make a mistake, it was somehow our fault. If they are on call and we have to pull them away from dinner on Friday night because a patient has taken a turn for the worse, it has to be the fault of someone on the nursing staff who deliberately instigated this intrusion into the doctor's private life.

I work for a private hospital where doctors are allowed to behave like spoiled brats. Luckily, I'm going to work for a state-run teaching hospital where they are held accountable for their behavior and actions just like the rest of us.

The sad thing is, as much as I love the patients and taking care of them, doctors have made me hate going to my job.

I also hate doctors. Doctors are no better than car mechanics. They are trained to fix people, just as a car mechanic fixes cars. Back when medicine was a mystery, doctors rightfully earned quite a bit of respect... but today, they are NOTHING MORE THAN PEOPLE MECHANICS, AND NOT VERY GOOD ONES AT THAT.

My wife is an RN. I have a Ph.D. Every doctor I know who has earned an MD and a Ph.D. both, agree completely with the assessment that the MD degree is just training to fix people and the Ph.D. is their "real" doctorate degree. Why so many MD's get their heads inflated to such grandiose proportions is beyond me.

Part of the point of mentioning the above is to say, I am not some random idiot. I have medical expertise in my family and I am very well educated. When I go to the doctor, I already know what I want. Doctors are "gatekeepers," nothing more, for me.

I injured my shoulder, and knew to take anti-inflammatories first. So I did. It didn't get better. Next step? Cortisone injection. I can't do that on my own, so I am forced to see a doctor. I go in and I say, "I want a cortisone injection. I have been taking advil for months and it's not getting better." What does this idiotic people mechanic do? Prescribe Naproxen. Why? Because it's the by-the-book first step for injuries like this. This IDIOT didn't listen to a word I said and has NO respect for my capabilities and intelligence.

You have little idea what doctors go through to become doctors. We forget it has the highest rate of divorce, suicide, depression, and anxiety than any other field. Doctors spend a quarter million to become doctors and put in a 100 hours a week as interns, 50 hours a week when they become pros IF they are lucky. They tell people what to do to better their health, with maybe 1 in 10 actually doing it. they charge a lot because they have $3000 monthly payments from their college loans. I know several doctors and they are all nice people. Most of them are defeated and wish they had gone into another field. their detachmnet stems from the fact that if they become friends with all their terminal patients, well, they'll go mad and some do.

One doctor told me that the arrogance is a result of not really being able to heal people, or healing 3 people in a 25 year career. that medicine is far more limited than the general public knows and they are constrained by politics. and that 90% of their patients come to see them because they messed themselves up some way. My friend said he treated a patient for a damaged spleen from fisting...I doubt you deal with that in your office.

I recently took my daughter to the emergency room because she was complaining of severe adominal pain. After performing a variety of test and the hospital requesting I speak with a caseworker they had on staff, it was decided by the doctors that my daughters pain was psychosymptomatic due to problems in the home. This was even written in her medical file. The next day I went to her regular pediatrician because she was experiencing pain. He was very accusatory asking "what is the problem, I have read the file and she is psychosymptomatic, she went home with you that is why the pain is back". He then read me the horrible things said in the notes from the caseworker. After letting him know that I nor my daughter said any of these things in the medical file, her pediatrician decided to order an x-ray of the abdomen. He reviewed the x-ray and saw that she was almost 100% impacted with stool and that was the cause of my daughter's pain. I will never trust a doctor again. I am in the process of sending formal complaints against the doctor and caseworker.

Anonymous from today July 27, I can fully understand why you are angry about the treatment you and your daughter received. As a doctor, though, I wondered whether the ER doctor asked when your daughter last had a bowel movement and whether your daughter's abdomen was directly examined by the ER doctor and what tests were done in the ER. Sloppy history taking, sloppy examination and thoughtless lab tests can lead to the wrong diagnosis. It also would be important to know what treatment was finally suggested by the pediatrician and what was the results of the treatment. Has your daughter had the symptom since then? Excuse the details but details are part of good medical practice and are what makes a correct diagnosis and prevents the troubling and upsetting conclusions which you described. ..Maurice.

I'm in Toronto/Canada...Sorry it's different system up here where the ice just wont melt.But this is my thought on doctors. MONEY. It just seem that it does not matter where you live, doctors are having the same syndrome. "MONEY". We patients too have the same syndrome.. "The Dollar Sign"

Here's my rant... when I was typing angrily.

I'm Diabetic and want another opinion. I couldn't get it because by signing my life away and branding my "Higher Being" to be just the only BEING that can manage my LIFE! I couldn't go to another doctor without feeling like I'm going through some affair. I just want to better my life with more guidance and of course, as intelligent as I am with out a PHD or ABCDEFGs... up my other hole, second opinions are greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately, most doctors dislikes patients that did not sign their life to them. If I ever need an advice. I am always stuck with one BEINGs' opinion and because that's the only ONE BEING that can see me.... I can only see the specialist that only this BEING knows and THINK that is good for me. Why do they have this kind of control over my life? It's not by choice I am diabetic, and it's not fun being one either. Please stop being "Your 10 minutes are up, I'll see you in 2 weeks dicks" and start using their PHDs and ABCDEFGs! .....

I tried to just go into another doctors' office, guess what. I had the worst experience ever. He did all the procedure, recorded my health card (gets paid) and took me for a stroll around the park. Questioned me, as if I don't TRUST my doctor! Holmes decides to investigate more on my other specialist for my other body parts, prying out names and their work address! He made me felt like a criminal for not going back to my ONE AND ONLY doctor.

So what if I signed my life to this ONE doctor! Why can't other doctors be more professional and just try to heal me!? It's better off to "Internet" myself back to health! "Thanks Google for all your hard work! Thanks Heath Line for providing me such great care! "Stupid Stupid Canadian I Don't Care About Your Health but I LOVE your MONEY Health System!!!

Yeah it's free, but we paid tax!!!Yeah it's free, but we work more day and night just to pay you MORE TAX!Yeah it's free, but you know what.. I rather pay for my Health, get my tax portion back for not fully utilizing every penny of it and since I'm paying, I get to choose who I want to heal me and start feeling like a HIGHER BEING MYSELF!We're not just your PATIENTS! We're also your CUSTOMERS!!!! SMILE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

I don't hate doctors, but I just absolutely LOATH their attitude towards their patients/money/...money....money.... money ...... money... and the system.

Canada Anonymous, what do you suggest we in the United States do to improve our healthcare system here? Go back to "pay for service" medicine. Obviously, you are not encouraging us to proceed to the Canadian system. ..Maurice.

Not really when the doctors have that much control. In the end, I think doctors will eventually becomes power freaks, doctors in a group will try to get "this" and "that" since everything is provided and funded by the government. Citizens will only have to sit back and watch the system fall....

A choice is what we all need. A choice to pay for our services and a choice to go to government funded hospitals and clinics. Equality only works if Equality can remain true.

I know it's hard for the patients or people who seeks help when they are not financially inclined. I am not rich myself. Paying for my diabetic medicine is also not easy when none of the pills I take are less than a dollar/buck. But would it be great when you have a choice to pay and in some hopes that this person can get professional help immediately? At least, even so it is not fair, someone can at least get some hope in living? When someone who is not sick to the bone would only say that is in-equality. But for a patient who is ill, equality and fairness is the least of their concerns. With our systems, these patients will only have to leave the Canadian System and seek for professional help else where in other countries.

But speaking for myself, the 10 minutes service here because doctors are getting paid for how many patients that they can see.... doctors does not provide the professional help that they are suppose to give. Even if they put a cap on how many patients they can see a day in hopes that the doctor would give patients more time, the doctors would just go home early when that cap is done. We're all just humans, so are doctors, but most doctors are too consume in their field to understand an average joe. Sometimes patients needs answers. This kind of health care system encourage doctors to be even more cold hearted and soulless towards patients and think that every patient is a dollar sign.

I am not saying that "pay for service" is the only way, but a choice is a better solution. The Canadian systems is not bad nor good. But if it can set as an example, please take the cons and learn from it to make it a even better system. Listen to the people who are being treated and not the doctors who are treating.

In the current U.S. medical care system, I am not sure that it is the physicians who are the most greedy. I think it is important to discover which of the stakeholders have indeed more greed (excessive desire to acquire or possess more, especially more material wealth, than one needs or deserves). Then we can build the system to attempt to control that behavior. I am not sure that we physicians, at least in the U.S. have greed as a dominating factor in carrying out our professional duties. Obviously, Canada Anonymous thinks so of the Canadian practitioners. However, think.. which stakeholder in the system wants money to trump medical service to the patient? Am I cynical if I mention as an answer the stockholders to insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Have they entered the market out of gracious and humanitarian motivations regarding their selected companies--or was it to MAKE MONEY--even if they already had enough money for a comfortable existence and life. And the drug and insurance companies then shape their involvement in medical care to meet their and their stockholders' desires. At least, that is how I size things up in the U.S. healthcare system. ...Maurice.

Yes, you're right.When ones life is already well off and comfortable why would money be a factor. One would have the luxury of time to seek for a better life, name and to be known.

Yes, I still think greed is also a dominating factor in why I do not like the attitude of doctors. This does not only apply to just money.

I apologize for getting my main point astray.Referring back to my original post, I was angry at how unprofessional some doctors are, when patients did not sign their life to them. I don’t see why I should feel as if I am cheating on my doctor for asking another for advice. I am sure a lot of people would ask many others for information from many different sources. But my visit to the other doctor proved different and was unpleasant. Point is, do you get all your groceries from one store or did you get every fact of your practice from one source? By having no choices and alternatives, one would feel being controlled. And since there’s only one source, there will be no room for improvements.

I mentioned that if I can pay for the services. Than maybe we could finally be treated like a customer with better respect.

I think the answer to your expressed concern is that physicians feel that a specific doctor-patient relationship should be held in great respect. For example, it would be wrong and unprofessional for one doctor to attempt to "steal" a patient from the care of another doctor (usually for financial benefit and usually in a small community without a potentially large patient population.) The other factor is that doctors give their colleagues the "benefit of the doubt" when a patient comes to them from another physician. It would not be unusual for the physician to question the motive or explanation by the patient for the change rather than initially assuming that the other physician was at fault in the doctor-patient relationship.

My view is that it is unproductive and not therapeutic for the physician to, at the outset, make an assumption as to who was "at fault". The doctor should accept the patient's explanation and observe how the new relationship progresses.

The other issue is whether the new doctor should contact the old doctor to get his or her take on the previous relationship. Based on my view above, I would not do that. I would expect a transfer of medical records.

Thanks for bringing up an interesting issue in the "I hate doctors" context. I wish that other doctors would come to this thread and write about their views and experience on this subject. ..Maurice.

To Canada Anonymous, if you were concerned about simply getting a "second opinion" and not changing doctors, it would be important that you disclose that clearly to the second doctor. I think, in general, doctors are not in favor of patients who are "doctor shopping". Maybe it is because the second doctor feels that this behavior represents an unstable/unreliable patient, a waste of the doctor's skills and time and a potential affront to their professional characterization of themselves if the patient should end up leaving the second doctor. You see, doctors are human too with their own insecurities. ..Maurice.

I am very glad you made this comment. I think most people think that their doctor's are on a higher moral, ethical, and emotional standard than the rest of us just because they obtained this "Doctor" status. This is a complete myth.

I think that is where some blame must fall on the patient as the damage a doctor can do is far more extreme than any mechanic or other service professional. We must always do our own research and second guess a doctor's opinion if surgery or medication is suggested. Or we may suffer our own health consequences.

Like a mechanic doctor's may recommend treatments that will benefit themselves financially. And often they will misdiagnose someone because they lack the knowledge or understanding or even the willingness to listen.

Like anyone, doctor's do not like to be second guessed even at the cost of our health. Recently a doctor friend confided in me that he found swelling that on a patients arm that indicated possible infection. He was an intern and his insistence on his diagnosis failed to alarm any interest with his attending physician as he did not agree. Days went by with no response from the attending as the infection got worse and spread throughout the patients body.

The patient condition worsened and before they could do anything the patient died from the attending physician lack of action. The intern was exactly correct and to this day the attending physician put the mistake on the intern. While this is not a daily occurrence doctor's make the same mistakes we do in our office's. Except these mistakes literally decide life, death, or permanent disability.

I was over 24 hours in labor, found placenta previa, c/section needed, doctor bullied me into pelvic x-rays and then when I asked for "bikini" incision he said "I don't do that & walked out, the Pediatric doctor looked amazed & told me "your baby is too biG" and then he ran out. Second day after surgery I painfully got to the bathroom but could not get back in bed so I sat in chair. Resident came in to examine me but I told her I just can't deal with it right now. Doctor comes is a little later, I'm still in chair IN PAIN, and when he is told I didn't let resident examine incision he said as he past "maybe she should just go home!" Now I will not go to male doctors, I was mutilated for no reason, (vertical scar) and I am now presently looking for Board Certified Plastic Surgeon to "fix" my stomach, operation is costly and I am already having anxiety attacks about it as I know I will HAVE TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL! Also, this ob/gyn did not get informed consent form from me I was extremely upset when I signed form, crying and in great distress as I felt extremely bullied and noone to help me and knowing I was going to mutilated by this doctor, should have asked for patient advocate with I wasn't so tired, frightened and so upset, this was my first child!. I wish I knew what I know now then. YES I HAD DOCTORS TOO!

All this pathetic hate makes it even easier for me to follow through with my plans to quit medicine. I finished residency two years aago and spend most of the time being worried about selfish whiners looking for lawsuits or freebees. One cannot even ask them to lose weight or quit smoking anymore without provoking anger. At the same time the government with medicare is basically trying to create a new gulag. A collegue of me just got a letter from them that they are investigating him for "fraud". Wasn't very successfull "fraud" as he keeps losing money on every medicare patient that walks through the door.

I'm out of this filed and you guys are making it easier. I will return to my old job as personal trainer with an MD-diploma to show for. At least I will be dealing with positive people that are interested in taking care of themselves and not thankless, selfish whiners that only think everybody else are there for them.

So much for sacrificing 7 years of my life (residency , medical school) with barely no social life at all. I will make sure to keep a big printout of this pathetic blog above my office until I have seen the last patient. Thanks guys. Get a lawyer next time you need someone to help you, I'm sure they are much more "empathic" and caring if you need everything for nothing, right?!

I took excellent care of my health. There is no one, including you Mr. Almighy Doctor, who took better care of themselves than me. Yet I now have further health problems because you all saw fit to take many unnecessary tests on me to make money. Don't you dare whine to me. You all did nothing to help me, injured me, harassed me, gave me unnecessary tests, and as a result I developed other health problems. I wish I could get a lawyer and sue plenty of doctors! You all got that new law protecting you! Stealthy smart. Sneaky. Better yet, I wish my insurance company would go after all of you. They know you all order too many tests just to make money and that's what they don't like - and I don't blame them! They are there to be used - not abused! As for the social aspect, grow up.People changed the culture on me and hurt me there, too. Cut out your whining, because of MD's, some of us have real problems!

I'll be happy to tell you why I googled, "I hate doctors", and why I generally dislike them. Despite your self-aggrandizing assumption that it must be because you give us bad news or can't fix all our problems, that's not it at all. Not by a long shot. I will preface this rant by saying it is a generalization. There are some caring, trustworthy, open-minded doctors who listen and have a sense of humility. But they are not typical. I hate (most) doctors because they assume a pretentious, elitist, paternalistic attitude that absolutely and completely prevents them from meaningfully listening to anyone who walks into their office. Why would God have a need to listen to an ant? They truly believe they are superior to everyone else, and that they are entitled to treat others rudely and callously. Again and again while I was in graduate school and working in a job with disabled mentally ill patients, I saw psychiatrists simply deny patient reports that were inconvenient to them. I had a client who was severely depressed and taking 60 mg. of Paxil. She said, "I'm still depressed". The doctor said, "you can't be, you're taking 60 mg. of Paxil". Just a few days ago the results of a study were published. The study found that for the severely depressed, SSRIs are only slightly better than placebo, and are not clinically significant. So, the mentally ill client was giving an accurate report about their state of mind and the effects of their medication, and the doctor simply chose to disregard it because he hadn't been handed something new and better by his pharmaceutical rep. That's why I hate doctors. It is one thing not to be able to help a patient. It is another thing to refuse to validate their perspective and their reality.

To the doctor who’s quitting, why does it have to be so black and white for you? Can you not take criticism? Your post only proves that you have bought into the thinking that you are almighty and we have no reason to dispute this other than be selfish whiners. Why not thoughtfully consider some of these posts and figure out what you can do as a doctor to improve patient outcomes. It may be that your “bedside manner” sucks and that’s why your patients are getting angry when you suggest they lose weight or quit smoking. Could be if you tried a different approach using your skills as both a doctor and a personal trainer you could actually bring some health into people’s lives. I would very much like to see more doctors actually using an integrative approach in the care of patients rather than throw pills at them. People who are sick are fearful and anxious, they aren’t going to come in revved up to get in shape like those who come in for personal training. The one thing that doctors are withholding from their patients that could massively change their health outcome is information. But as long as you have the “it’s my way or the highway” in your thinking this isn’t ever going to happen. When a patient tells you something that you’ve never heard, how about filing that into your knowledge base instead of telling a patient that their very real experience or symptom doesn’t exist because you’ve never heard about it or seen it before. Open your minds, listen to patients, and believe them.

I’ve gotten over my hatred for doctors although it’s taken years to regain my health after being treated, misdiagnosed, and really- really- really screwed up by them. I’ve forgiven them but that doesn’t mean I excuse what they did to me and what I see all the time is being done to others. You need to look at what causes health. In my case I recovered from CFS after nearly 2 decades. I recovered in spite of doctors not because of them. I recovered from a devastating illness that many clinicians still debate whether it’s real. I connected the dots to figure out that CFS is caused by the cumulative effect of stressors over a period of time. Doctors don’t look at that because it’s not tangible, they can’t see it on test results, stress and the symptoms of stress on the body in the very extreme as manifested in CFS is too subjective. They understand stress a little but they don’t understand the toxic world we are living in and the unnatural stress in huge loads we have on our bodies. They think that giving more chemicals which are stressors to the body in the way of pills are the answer. Obviously this isn’t working, people are sicker than ever, they’re fatter, they’re more addicted, they’re more depressed.

Patients need information, information, information and in many cases not drugs, they need to know that they have the cure within them. Give them the power and control to heal with the proper information and you take away that element of fear and loss of control and put them on the road to recovery. If you tell a patient the reasons that being overweight are causing their health problems or increasing their risk of health problems and some of their options for losing weight my guess is that they’ll receive this info more readily then flat out saying, “you have to lose weight.” But before you can do this you have to stop buying into the myth that eating a diet of real whole food instead of processed food is not realistic (and so many more lifestyle measures that will bring joy and health to patients). So I’ll say this again, you have to look at what causes health instead of how to put Band-Aids on illness. I would love to have you stay in medicine and adopt an integrative approach rather than throwing it all away. Think of the good you could do.

Thank you! I most recently hate doctors for how invasive their questionnaire's are getting. Anyone been to a new doctor of late? Most of all, above all, I have always hated doctors for clearly treating patients as objects whose privacy they are entitled to invade as if its nothing.And yes I hate doctors for aquiescing to the nanny state and weighing patients at every visit, and believing the lie that thin is neccessarily healthier.

And I abhor male gynecologists for simply being male gynecologists and making my skin crawl! I abhor their smarmy pics on their websites. I abhor their smarmy little smiles which I want to take a baseball bat to.

Anonymous, you are aware that this is Maurice Bernstein's blog, right?

I'll add my voice. I'm 25 and I'm thinking about starting pre-med classes in January. I will have to quit my job in the summer to become a full-time student again, the whole shebang. So I googled "I hate doctors" just to see what people had to say about it. Well, now I know.

I think I learned a lot of valuable things. Luckily, I have come away undeterred.

I wonder if there is anyone here who will say they hate doctors so much, they wish there weren't any.

The reality is that Doctors and Health workers are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US just behind cancer and heart disease. This is a well documented fact and does not even include the undocumented deaths and maiming of innocent patients.

While we may have the best technology and education it does not prevent the mistakes and over treatment of patients by doctors. "When in doubt, take it out" is often the cure. The long list of unnecessary drugs and surgery are other abuses. The reality is that our medical system is in turmoil and needs to be corrected.

Too many radical surgeries and too much medication is being administered and needs to stop. Malpractice is often a good thing which prevents doctors from making expensive and risky procedures that only benefit them financially.

I came across this blog with the same search words in Google i.e. "I hate doctors."

It takes a lot for me to even consider making an appointment with a doctor. Something has had to bother me for a long time. But no matter what it is, each time I visit a doctor it's like I have to build a legal case around why I even have the nerve to suggest that something is wrong with me. If it's not something that can be simply diagnosed with an x-ray such as a broken bone then they really want nothing to do with it. I had a doctor appointment today. The visit itself make me sick. I REALLY do HATE doctors.

I wasn't always a doctor hater. I actually appeared very healthy except for a few chronic annoying problems. I started to become skeptical of health care when in 1990 when I called my doctors office 3 times within one week because of a fever of 104. My doc was on vacation, each time I called, the on-call doc told me to take 2 aspirin and call him if it didn't go away. The fever started on a weekend so I called Mon., took aspirin and called again on Wed., got the same response by Fri. I was coughing my lungs out. And insisted on an appt for the next day (Sat.). During all this time, I had been going to work, people told me I looked like death but I was high from the fever and not really thinking properly, so I thought I was probably not that bad. When I arrived for the appt on that Saturday the doc said "you don't look sick, you probably just have laryngitis". However, when he took my temperature HIS face went pale because it read: 104!! He didn't believe me because he thought I was misreading the thermometer. So I had 104 fever for an entire week. The x-ray showed pneumonia in three quarters of my lungs. My thought now is: "Why would any doctor just assume that patients are too stupid to read a thermometer?" Of course there are people that are, but I was working in a high tech industry that is very detail oriented. Also, if he had doubts he could have just asked me to describe what the thermometer looks like (eg. I could've described where the mercury was in relation to the big numbers versus the smaller tick marks. Surely that would have been better than frying my brain for a week.

Now, I'm faced with another systemic health problem. Blood tests reveal that I have a certain condition that can be managed with medication. Every time I tell my physician that I have a symptom, he tells me its not related to the thing I have. Even though it is one of the classic symptoms of the condition. Instead of attributing it to the condition I have, he blames some weird reason. One symptom I had was intermittent swelling in my feet. His response was: "it was probably a mosquito bite". So I guess he thinks I'm too stupid to know the difference.

I went to a specialist for the condition and when talking about surgery, I asked about side effects, dangers and down-time. He said: "oh none. no side effects, its very safe and you might be tired for a day or two afterwards.

I had the surgery. My surgeon said it went perfectly without complications yet I was unable to work for about 4 weeks. I'm still not 100%. And am having many debilitating side effects that I'm trying to ignore and move on regardless. As for all of the docs I mentioned, I left them all and am in the process of finding new ones.

I work for myself and have lost thousands of dollars because I wasn't prepared for the downtime and side effects. I may not be able to get affordable health insurance because now I need to be on drugs forever. I may have trouble getting a job also. All I needed was to be told what to expect, surgery could have been postponed to a time when it wouldn't have been so bad for my business.

In the first case I was too sick to get a second opinion. In the other 2 cases, I did get a second opinion, everyone downplayed the surgery and drugs. I only became aware of the risks when signing the paperwork at the hospital before surgery. I should have walked out then, but I thought, I'm here I should just do what they say.

So now I hate doctors. I am a victim of their apathy and condescension.

I lost trust in male doctors as a child after seeing a young girl undressed and surrounded by male students who laughed and poked at her vagina - her cries attracted the nursing sister who broke it up...I then knew that these men were not to be trusted - they were opportunists and some were predators.My brother in law was even admitted into the labour ward so he could watch a young woman giving birth - he was a clerk but his friend was a junior doctor - this all happened in the days when Dr's were still considered Gods...female patients had virtually no rights.I was so disgusted and horrified by these things that I worked at the Medical Board for many years and heard it all...I don't see male Dr's for anything...I also, am well informed about my body and don't just submit to any examination. I think women are over screened for all sorts of things...the need for all of these exams should be discussed with a femaale Dr you trust...in many cases, you might not need the tests at all or not as often as others.Women tend to be lumped together by the medical profession.Stand up to the medical profession - do not submit to an exam that makes you uncomfortable -check that it's necessary and then find a Dr who has your interests at heart.Men are excused from lots of check-ups...the prostate exam is no longer the routine exam - it's a blood test yet women are still expected to front up without complaint for very intimate exams often at the hands of male Dr's...Totally unacceptable...I don't believe any young women should see male Drs (unless it's her choice) and older women need to be aware and stand up for themselves.I personally believe a % of male gynaecologists are in that field because they enjoy the power...the opportunity and access. I've met some awful examples at the medical Board over the years.I just don't believe men can be trusted to do this work...a % will abuse their position every time.The most recent case involved a dermatologist sexually assaulting female patients - you would have thought you'd be safe with a dermatologist...sad reflection on human nature.These men do so much harm.

The person isn't that unusaul at all it's more common that people hate doctors than worship them as all knowing demigods. Bioethics {I don't know if that's your pen name but} it's more unusaul it's not reported more often, in health magazines that seems still very hush hush.Well to begin with with any doctor I don't want to be seen as just a body part like say a nose and not a person without feelings.Arrogant doctors and ones cold as ice which I've had experince with can give you post tramatic stress and even more scary as a child.Like as a child told not to act like one when I happened to throw up or show any signs of being human.The world hasn't caught up on that verbal abuse has happened with some doctors which becomes post tramtic stress with what went on.But they get away with it.Lets face it what doctors do is a weird situation.If they didn't have Dr to their name it would be called abuse and torture.I'm not saying all doctors are bad but the media needs to wake up and listen to people and what the doctor is missing. Not just techical or healthcare just the emotional and raw feeling,abuse, part of it as written above in diffrent experinces or ones alike.These things in answer to the blog should be taken seriously and listened too.These kinds of things get shoved under the rug in magazines and media.Actually searching for I hate doctors and hearing other peoples experinces is good therapy because someone else has been there and knows what it's like.The internet is caught up on things like this the media is not only if someone is murdered by the doctor does it get into media.Not the corruption of power and how it affects people thru the doctors arrogance in many ways.I don't know everything but this is just me.

I don't really want to say I hate doctors, but I have been severely traumatized by one. I went to the ob-gyn last June. I have a history of cervical cancer, and was having issues with bleeding for some reason. I was really upset on many levels. I didn't know what was happening to me, so I guess I was just really worried. So, I went to an ob-gyn that I had met once before. (I did not like her the first time I met her because somehow my appointment was dropped from the schedule and she couldn't exam me, she only could make time to speak to me. She seemed annoyed, and it was upsetting to me. I ended up having my exam by my family doctor's nurse practitioner.) Well, when this bleeding thing happened they- (family doctor's nurse and nurse practioner)-told me I needed to see an ob-gyn. So, I gave the original woman another chance. That was a mistake. A man came into the room that I thought was a colleage.I don't know why I assumed that. He was wearing the outfit, and never said anything about who he was. He asked me all the pertinent questions. Then she came in and started the exam. Mid exam, I realized he was a student. A student asked me all about my issues and personal history and relayed it to her. He had a thick accent, and I wondered if he knew and understood everything I had been trying to explain.No one asked if he could be there or question me. I felt violated and betrayed. I made an appointment with a doctor, not a student.They should have told me he was a student, and asked if it was okay. She was very abrasive towards me as well. The exam was painful and she kept saying it was no worse than a menstrual cramp. (I think I would know) I was bawling by the time my feet hit the parking lot. I did call and complain. I wanted to tell her in person how much she hurt me and why, but she sent me a letter stating she knew how upset I was and would no longer be seeing me as a patient. (Duh, I never wanted to see her as a patient again anyway). I have thought about it everyday since, and I was supposed to get a three month evaluation, but I didn't. I don't know if I can ever get another pelvic exam again. I have been to a rheumatolgist a couple of times since then for an autoimmune disorder that they can't figure out. Even though those exams are pretty non invasive they have students there (but they inform me they are students, which I appreciate). I just feel gross being there. Something happened to me after that appointment in June. I haven't been the same since.

You need not describe your assault here since it will be of no value except for your ventilation.

What you should do is, if the assault was criminal, if it occurred in recent years, you should notify the police. Otherwise, if you feel you were unprofessionally mistreated, you should notify your local/state medical licensing agency.

You wrote "I've told no-one". Well, most importantly, you should FIRST notify the physician who performed the gyn exam about your concern and expect an explanation. ..Maurice.

For years we thought of Drs as special, above the rest, types.Once they went for the money only,it changed. Now THEY think they areabove the rest of us, and are allowed to treat us with disdain,disrespect,even disgust.And the fear of being sued is partly to blame. If our insurance is high, think what theirs must be,and its bound to cause resentment.Even though they charge enough to pay for that as well as their student loans, and new home, a newcar every year and a new office every three years. But since I havebeen adult, I have experienced morebad attitude and disrespect fromdrs than from others. One femalegyn made disgusting remarks to thenurse in the room about the condition of my vagina. I started to tell her about the sexual abuseand torture I endured at the handsof rapist, but I didn't. I later wrote that information to the clinic where she worked. I do notknow or care what became of thatbut I have not been to a dr since.She was not the only reason, but Iwill not see a dr of my own volition ever again.

God, i hate doctors... My father is a doctor in fact, but he never listens to me and says i'm making all up.

The reason i wanna post here is because today i went finally to a decent doctor cause i was complayning that i have a "trush" while i was diagnosed with a strep troath. They gave me antibiotics and now i have a fucking fungus colony in my troath and tonsils. The damn doctor gave them to me without even making a test to check what type of infection i have in my throat.

Now i'm finally taking the right drugs, but just caus i checked here on the net and i learned about "trush" (oral candidiasis) and i forced my parents to take me to the hospital for a second opinion.

I Hate GPs - General Practitioners - held to be some sort of gold standard in the UK but merely a bunch of half-arsed morons with no speciality who make a series of random diagnosis and are merely in place to prevent us - the patients - from getting to see the specialists we need to see. I won't get started on them - although it's fair to relate how a senior registrar sent me packing after asking how my recently broken elbow was: "Still very painful doctor, here, here and here," I pointed out. "Yes I will discharge you that's normal." Normal - how fucking normal is it that I'm still in fucking pain six years later. Anyway I diverge. I hate GPs who offer nothing other than their medical opinion based on fuck all but a couple of years reading medical books in a library. When I was 17 my doctor told me my sciatica could only be cured by lying on a floor for six weeks. Evidently medical opinion favours a more mobile treatment now that lying prostate on a hard wooden floor which can only really make things worse. Happily I report he was totally fucking wrong and I ended up having major back surgery to remove a prolapsed disc which after two years of fucking pain and agony i blame on that useless lazy fuck. I then went to hospital for physio and happened to read my notes in the ward - "The patient was obese". Hold on Obese? Obese is 17fucking stone and not over six foot tall and 13-stone having just done army service. Obese - the lazy fucking bastard had found an easy way to address the fact that a young man in his prime was experiencing back problems and surgery which was entirely an NHS fuck up. I've spent days trying to see doctors to find out what was wrong with me and found out I had shingles - they failed to provide the more expensive drug cure but gave me cream so that the episode lasted 3weeks. Don't get me started on trying to get an appointment with the lazy fucks who you have to work around despite the fact that you pay their over-sized salaries. But what has recently fucked me off was the doctor who told me I had IBS. That is Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Yes this from a GP who based it on my 1 week of bowel movements (I thought I merely had a bug) - but no this doctor of no speciality who has probably never seen a GastroEntrology ward determined based on my presentation that I had a chronic and lifelong affliction from which there is no cure. How the fuck does she know? Who gave her the right to pass her judgement on anything without formal testing, scans and diagnosis? And then she sends me off with a packet of drugs never to be seen again. How do you diagnosis I wonder - a quick google determines:

As a rule, all possible physical, structural, and infectious abnormalities of the GI tract need to be unquestionably eliminated before you agree to an IBS diagnosis. This requires a physical examination, preferably by a board-certified gastroenterologist, and may include the following studies:

Other diagnostic studies should be minimal and will depend on the symptom subtype. For example, in patients with diarrhea-predominant symptoms, a small bowel radiograph or lactose/dextrose H2 breath test. For patients with pain as the predominant symptom, a plain abdominal radiograph during an acute episode to exclude bowel obstruction and other abdominal pathology. For patients with indigestion, nausea, and bloating, an abdominal ultrasound to rule out gallstones. For patients with any numbness in association with constipation, Multiple Sclerosis should be excluded. For older patients (age 50 and above), pancreatic cancer may need to be excluded.

SO in summation for me Google is the new doctor in the house because these stupid fucking morons are a waste of time and space. I only want them to refer me to a real doctor or to give me the drugs I think I need. I don't need them - I don't want them. I hate doctors

I hate doctors...not as a patient, but as a co-worker. I'm a respiratory therapist and I work in a large hospital. Out of the 60 to 80 doctors i work with frequently, i've met about 5 that are decent, respectable excuses for human beings. I can not imagine worse pieces of garbage to have to follow orders from. I actually was working towards medical school but after being around doctors for a while, i realized i definitely did not want to become that kind of person. Most of these egotistical, arrogant animals will not even acknowledge you at all unless they need to blame something on you that was there fault in the first place. I also used to try to be friendly and talk to them when they come around but they're just not interested in talking to those lower than them. It's the most frustrating job atmosphere imaginable. Don't get me wrong...if you're a young, good lucking nurse, well then you have nothing to worry about if it's a male doctor. I've only been working in the medical field for a little while but I am already starting back to school for something else because i cannot work with people like this my whole life. ss

For those posting comments such asthese I beg to differ. You will soon have others that you need tohate more and that will be PA'sand NP's (physician assistants andnurse practitioners.). The job of the physician is beingfarmed out to lesser skilled people. I flat out refuse to see pa's and np's and if any of you have any sense you will too!

People hate doctors because so many of them are pompous assholes who treat patients as if they were ignorant, uneducated, and simply less then they are. I just saw a doctor yesterday who said they he didn't need to look at my multiple positive test results (MRIs with lesions, positive ANA and antiDNA, confirmed peripheral neuropathy, elevated liver enzymes). He said he didn't need to, and that technology just gives too many tests that doctors overuse, and he was a doctor, so he can look at someone and tell when they are sick. Perhaps this was because I have depression in my background, and take medication for depression. So he looks and me and thinks "psych patient." But to not be interested in REAL DATA, what a dangerous quack. This was a doctor that was referred to me as one of the best. Perhaps my reference knew a med student, such as the one who was gazing at the doctor as he stroked his own ego.

I hate doctors because I have back and hip pain for going on 9 years now. It has ruined my career (and eliminated the career I loved). I used to have hope. Now I have fear. They will not find anything. The past 3204 days have proven that. Instead they ask me if I abuse drugs or alcohol (I don’t do drugs and hardly drink). Meanwhile they write prescriptions for whomever is kicking them back funds that day (I suppose). I do not want to be pharmaceutically maintained, I want an answer and a resolution. The worst part is that now I have developed a genuine fear of going to them, and why not. The last time I wrote out everything, stated I was not comfortable with a mechanical diagnosis with no proof. I also stated that I did not want drugs, I wanted a resolution, and that if anyone changed my drugs from flexural (which I take approximately 2 per ever 60 days) and celibrex, while they were looking for an answer, I did not want anything which made me gain weight. I wrote this out because I have become so disillusioned that I break into tears at the doctors office now. Guess what she prescribed me. neuroton (instant 30lb weight gain) and antidepressants. I threw away both prescriptions. I am not depressed, I am pissed and appalled that professionals can just string someone along for years. You know the worst part, she makes good money, she will probably retire off of not fixing people, I may never retire because the pain has ruined two careers already. So I will just be broke and crippled-thank you doctors. P.S. Unlike most of the country (I guess), I do not see how we have the best healthcare in the world. When doctors sting patients like me along, act like drug dealers and never fix anything. It makes those of us with health insurance (and I have great insurance) wish for salaried (and a low salary) doctors. Why? Because perhaps then physicians would enter the field because they want to help people, not for status and kickbacks. That’s my 2 cents.

That very well could have been me you are referring to. Hate is a strong word but I'm running out of faith. I am at my witts end with docotrs. I live in Northern CA (not Sac, further north). Anyhow, I have been to countless doctors with no real answers or results, only chapter 7 Bankruptcy, pain, surgeries and frustration and practically a divorce as well. I just don't get it. Any other professional would not get paid if the service they provide didn't get completed or fulfilled yet somehow doctors are getting paid (very well) for doing virtually nothing. Is it fear of being sued? Has it come down to that? What about missing a serious illness and getting sued? I have been going through years of chronic fatigue and pain (I was finally diagnosed with chronic fatige syndrome) but doctors don't want to do the investigation work or know how to treat it. I also have chronic pelvic pain. I've had 3 diagnostic laparoscopies one revealed stage 2 endometriosis the others supposedly fine....ok so why am I still in pain? I also am running out of time to conceive and have children I'm 32. My husband and I recently had a fertility appt. with a reproductive endocrinologist in Sac. oblivious to anything other than pushing his books (which were probably not even written by him) he said I was running out of time and the only thing that can be done is IVF...what about the pain I'm in and how that's effecting my life...HELLO! Be careful of ferility docotrs because they have a product to sell which makes them a ton of money and that product is IVF...which can leave you with no baby still and a pile of debt.

If you all hate doctors so much, then why do you keep going to them? Seems to me that you are all just a bunch of whiners who must have a scapegoat for your illnesses.

The truth is that medicine was never an exact science and many things are still not understood. Many physicians do sincerely care about their patients, but lack the tools, understanding, technology to solve their problem. Do you really think that if they could solve your problems that they would hold out on you?

So again, I must say, if you have doctors so much, don't go to them. It is funny to me how often people say such garbage until they are faced with a terminal illness.

Doctors make me Ill, literally. We go to them when are SICK hoping that they will actually do some research on our symptoms and medical findings. The MAIN problem with doctors is they ONLY look at lab results and sometimes not even that very thoroughly. It is a shame that they will not spend the time to LISTEN to the patients and put two and two together and make an educated guess? That is about all I have come to expect from them.. an educated GUESS, unless of course, you are bleeding profusely from the head or a limb is falling off. They absolutely HATE it when you have a freaking clue too. I will NEVER let only the doctors decide what is wrong with me without double checking on them and I ALWAYS get copies of my lab results. Most of the problems with my health were caused by doctors medications... I am sick to death of this shit. SO WHAT if I educated myself a "little" to try and understand what these lab results mean? SO WHAT? You are encouraged by many to educate yourself and become the doctors PARTNER ion your health care. They HATE THAT. WHY? As long as you never question them or ask an intelligent question they will take your money and send you home with medication. Medications are killing people everyday. They need to pay more attention to the person as a whole and LISTEN to the patients symptoms. I will stop here, my blood pressure is going up.

I hate doctors because of the way my family has been treated. I have Hashimoto's Disease, osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.

I was having problems getting a diagnosis and made the mistake of listening to a nurse who treated me in the emergency room. She told me to stick to the doctor I had if I wanted to find out what was wrong. So I did.

I had such a bad experience. This doctor rolled his eyes at me when I told him I was having a hard time working because I didn't feel good. He said "I see. You don't want to work." I told him that was not the case at all. I wanted to work. I was ridiculed by his staff. They would leave the door open while they were reading my chart and say things like "look, now she thinks she has menapause." The final straw was when I heard him complaining to his nurse that it wasn't fair that he had to have me as a patient. I was so difficult. If difficult means that they were unable to diagnose me and therefore they did not want me as a patient anymore, well then yeah, I guess I'm difficult. On my last visit to this doctor I stood up across from him so I was eye to eye and let him have it. He put notes in my file (on the computerized system) so that with every doctor I went to see from then on, I was labled a difficult patient.

This affected my son's care. He started to have seizures for some unknown reason. When he was brought to Children's hospital by ambulance, I was there. I overheard the EMT tell the doctor my son had a seizure while he was being brought to the hospital. Further, the teachers at his school witnessed him have seizures. Yet, the doctor talked to me like he did not believe my son had any seizures. They put him in a room in the hospital with seizure monitoring equipment, but told me the tech was not in that weekend. They never even turned it on.

I finally changed doctors and went to see a doctor who was from India. He had all my medical problems diagnosed within two months. Further, he looked at my soons MRI and cat scan and patiently listened and explained his condition to me. My son had an adeno virus and a high fever. Because of this he had some swelling on the brain that produced the seizures. The other doctors had needlessly put him on depacote after finally witnessing one of these seizures. He was on this medicine for several months. I took him off and he was fine. It never happened again.

I live in a small town in Laramie, WY. If I had my choice I would continue to make sure I saw a doctor from India. However, there is not a lot of choices in a small town. I think I found a decent doctor though. At least she listens. It has been easier now that fibromyalgia has become somewhat of a "real" disease.

I believe many American doctors have the idea that patients shoud cater to them. They don't consider their profession to be a business like any other business (where the customer comes first). They are special. Why can't it be about helping people--not about money or feeling important.

Further, I think American doctors are not able TO WORK OUTSIDE WHAT THEY LEARNED IN THEIR MEDICAL BOOKS IN COLLEGE. If it is something new, it must not exist.

Why are lawyers required by the bar to go to seminars and get continuing education on the law, but doctors ARE NOT REQUIRED to be members of the AMA or get any continuing education after college? It is strange, don't you think?

I feel ya on the FM issue. It's definitely a disease that's still marginal in terms of acceptance by the medical establishment, and I've heard other doctors refer to patients diagnosed with FM as though it were a somatic condition. You should realize that the issue is complicated by doctors who fairly indiscriminately diagnose patients with specific pain disorders such as fibromyalgia. It is difficult for professionals to walk the line between being scientifically skeptical and paving the way to treatment, as a diagnosis can do, particularly with such difficult-to-diagnose conditions.As a patient you are owed respect by any medical professional, regardless of the complications of the disease you may be suffering.The last thing I'd like to mention is that doctors are, in fact, required to take continuing medical education (CME) courses.

I fu@#$!g hate all doctors especially pediatricians. I think all pediatricians should fu@#$!g die!!!When I was 9 years old I was forced into a genital exam at an annual physical. I was not sick in any way, no symptoms anywhere, and had never been abused/violated by anyone until I was abused and violated by the pediatrician and my mother in that doctor office. I was not told what the doctor wanted to do so I was not given the chance to say "NO"!!! But then again kids have no rights at all!! All kids now are forced into genital exams at annual physicals even when they are not having problems in that area. The doctor told me to lie down, he removed my underwear leaving me completely naked on the table and spread my legs wide open and my mother just sat there an watched. I was absolutely horrified and humiliated and violated!!! I hope you fu@#$!g all got a good thrill out of it! My mothers response to me being upset about it, as is the attitude of the entire medical community is that "you'll get over it". Well I never fu@#$!ing did you fu!@#g ass@#$les. I have never let another doctor near my private parts again and refuse to undress below shorts and a bra. I had decided on that day that I fu!@#g hate my mother and all doctors, I would never have a baby ...and never have, nor do I have any desire to. I would stand outside my mothers bedroom door at 9 and 10years old with a steak knife thinking that I should kill her for what she and the doctor did to me (and I amost did), but I ended up beating up and bullying a lot of kids over the years. It sickens me to know that every child on this planet is being medically abused/molested/violated and have no dignity/civil rights to say no. The "lucky" ones are coerced (another form of force)into having their legs spread wide open when they aren't even sick and are traumatized by the whole idea. The unlucky ones like me, are forced into it.

I can only implore to all parents not to allow genital exams of your kids, especially if they are not sick. Do not allow it, do not coerce them into it.

A lot of children will comply only because they will be afraid of getting in trouble or are intimidated just by adults telling them they should do it even though they feel horrified/humiliated/violated by being forced naked and someone spreading their legs. You are traumatizing your child and some of them will never forgive and will be damaged for life.

American doctors are good at bullying and scaring adult patients into genital/pelvic exams, pap smears etc by denying birth control pills, other medications etc unless you get a pelvic/pap smear when the safe use of the pill or other medications has absolutely nothing to do with your cervix or vagina. They also lie trying to scare American women by saying that you are going to die if you don't have a pelvic exam every year...that is all a lie (check this blog out, it has a lot of good information http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/unnecessary-pap-smears/)...

so pediatricians are good at scaring parents as well, into allowing their children to be humiliated/violated/molested by them. I can only imagine the number of pedifiles that flock into this profession to get access to kids genitals.

Check out this incident that happened to 57 6th grade girls who were actually physically forced into genital exams at school. Here is one of the website urls on this incident: http://www.capalert.com/sexedabcdisney/cinderella.htm

I suppose all you fu!@#g doctors think all these girls will just "get over it" too right? I know from my one genital exam as a child that they will never get over it. It's OK to fu!@#$g violate/molest/humiliate children (mostly girls/females because kids do not have dignity/civil rights and "it's all for their own good".Children are traumatized and damaged by it and the medical community could give a sh@t and just go along their merry way.

As for me, I have never had a boyfriend and have no interest in having a relationship with anyone.I will most likely die an early death because of my molestation/violation by my pediatrician and mother. But hey, that genital exam was "for my own good" right? I guess I was going to die if I didn't have that genital exam and it was also for my own good in the long run right?

I will fu@#$g die before I ever let any doctor/nurse near my private parts again and have let many things go and know permanent damage has been done to who knows what organs...I let all abdominal pain no matter where it is, go without treatment and if any doctor/nurse ever so much as looks at my genitals again, I will fu@#$g kill them and their colleagues literally.

So take that to your American Academy or Board of Pediatrics...not that it will matter since the American medical community has such a perverted infatuation with children's and women's private parts and wish to maintain that power/control over the most vulnerable.

I suppose my comments will not be approved to be seen by the public by the blog author since the reality of humiliation and violations done by pediatricians towards kids is some kind of taboo to talk about.

AL, sounds like your experience was terrible. Parents DO in fact have the right to refuse treatments or exams on behalf of their children.

That said, I went through similar exams as a boy. I never liked them, and as soon as I was old enough to say no, I rejected them. But I never felt molested or inappropriately touched by a doctor. At least some pediatricians are professional. And I would guess that most of them are.

Finally, I was curious about the story you linked about forced genital exams in the Broward County School District. I read the story, and oddly enough could find NO reference to such a case in news or court dockets anywhere else except on the CAP website. I think there's a strong possibility that story is hogwash.

I personally don't care what rights the parents have because it's not their body that's being violated/molested and my "parent's right" sure as hell didn't do me any good.

Children obviously have no dignity or civil rights and ARE old enough to say "NO" to these "exams" the day they are able to utter the word!!

I also don't care whether a doctor "acts professionally" or not. The child's (patient's) point of view is the only view that counts since it would be their genitals on display and not the doctor's!! If children were outright told they can say "NO" to the exam if they are not comfortable with it, (basically exercising their dignity rights, not to be humiliated and violated), most would say "NO".

The forced exams incident happened 14 years ago in 1996 so I don't expect it to be found everywhere on the web at this point and I doubt it's hogwash having experienced a forced exam first-hand and seeing the medical community's attitude first-hand as an adult when you say no to being violated, as well as reading blogs of many other women encountering the same attitudes as well when they say "NO". Here are other web sites I have found so far on this incident and another similar sickening incident. There was a third incident with 4 and 5 year olds at school as well but I can no longer find it on the web.

Because on other threads, Blogger.com failed to publish comments or deleted them when the numbers went into the hundreds, I am concerned that this may happen with this thread. Therefore I had requested that further comments here be terminated and that they should be written on "I Hate Doctors Chapter 2". Unfortunately, I inadvertently allowed additional postings here. I strongly advise that further postings be written to the above link. Continue the discussions.. but now on Chapter 2. Thanks. ..Maurice.

Doctors are the biggest assholes in the world. Whenever I see the commercials on TV about a drug option, and the typical follow-up, "Ask your doctor if blah-blah is right for you", I always am torn between humor and anger. I haven't had one, save an orthopedic surgeon (Lynch in Hershey, Pa)(Good man!), ever get anything right. Its almost laughable. I've wised up, and whenever possible, I doctor myself. I don't need the condescension from a guy with a 124 IQ who is not helping me. Period. All Love Docs, All love!

I have had good doctors and bad doctors. But nothing is worse than when you're in pain and scared and doctors treat you like you are crazy. I actually had one of my doctors tell me straight out when I was concerned that I might have endometriosis. She said there is no way I could have endo because my OBGYN would have seen it when he did my laparoscopy. Well two weeks later when my doctor perfomed my hysterectomy, low and behold I had stage 4 endometriosis. I just really wish doctors wouldn't say things with such certainty when they can easily be wrong. I also hate when they tell you that you are fine, without running any tests what so ever. I hate when they discount your fears and treat you like a hypochondriac even though every complaint you have ever made has been backed up by lab results and tests etc. I just don't understand why they can't just be decent and treat you like a human being. It really sucks to wait for your appointment hoping you will get some answers and some relief from your pain, and all they do is treat you like you're crazy and talk down to you like you are a child. It leaves me feeling hopeless. I seriously hope that this one doctor has to suffer the way I have had to, so that he will see what it feels like. On the other hand I had a great OBGYN who was straight with you, caring and understanding and if you had a concern he wouldn't belittle you. He would run the appropriate tests so that he could ease your mind. He had good bedside manor and was never rude , unkind or treated me with anything but respect. I wish he could be my PCP, that would be great! In the meantime, I think I'm just going to stop going to doctors all together and just suffer with the pain.

Doctors are ignorant, arrogant and do not use anything like logic or science in diagnosing patients despite that there is better and better software for diagnosis every day.When the doctors cannot understand what is wrong with a patient, they blame the patient ! Without fail ! They work for the HMO and insurance company not the patient.It takes years of fighting them to get a correct diagnosis. If you are a child, rich, or famous perhaps,then you might have a shot at good care.Otherwise, forget it. It took doctors many YEARS to learn wash their hands and way too many still don't ! They killed my father and put me in a coma. They do more harm to people than good.

I hate doctors too. I hate that I can't get decent care for something as clear-cut as thyroid disease. When I ask for a change of medicine or an increase because my numbers are worse and I'm not doing well they treat me like I've asked for meth and cocaine all at the same time.

Just for thyroid medication for a disease I've had for years! I hate doctors, the gatekeepers and preventers of our health and quality of life.

Well at least most of them. When I get an intelligent one who also listens and builds a relationship they tend to move on to bigger and better clinics far away.

So sad. I have to face the idiot again tomorrow and beg for help. Help I'm sure I won't receive even though they're happy to take my money. Again.

I hate doctors because when they cannot diagnose your illness they claim there is something wrong with you. You will never hear a doctor say "I don't know. I will get back to you." I hate American doctors because they make more than enough money and then complain about the American medical system and that they don't make enough money. I hate doctors because they will never fight for patient rights and decent medical care for everyone if it means less money for themselves. I hate doctors because it took them 6 years to diagnose my early arthritis and now I have permanent damage. Why haven't doctors been replaced by diagnostic machines?You can learn more from "google academy" than your doctor will ever bother to know about your medical condition, especially if it is not an illness that middle aged men get.

I think all American doctors should be replaced by doctors from India and Africa. They treat you like human beings and are working for you. American doctors think they are better then you and you should cater to them and their huge egos. If you don't kiss their a&@ses, they won't diagnose you.

I hate doctors because they have killed more than one person close to me.I hate American doctors because they blame everyone else for their medical malpractice law suits when in reality, it is their arrogance that has caused the malpractice in the first place.

If your car is broken and mechanics can not fix it, do you stop seeking a solution? Chronic pain with no diagnosis is the exact same scenario. Except you guys get paid for whatever dumb reason. Yes I posted on this board. Guess what I still hate doctors, I still keep going but not because I expect them to find anything ever. I go when I get a UTI, or for normal check ups. I do not go with any expectation that they will be able fix anything, in fact, I assume they will just ignore the UTI until I have more age appropriate bladder problems. Yep, that is how useless most of the medical community is. They should be paid on a result basis, at least that would weed out the 95% of physicians that are worthless.

I hate doctors! I agree with the above postings that they don't care. They are more concerned with pandering to the insurance industry than anything. They are the "gate keepers" to health care. They treat what they have no experience in rather than refer to a specialist or admit they don't know, they minimize a patients health concerns and they always fall back on the "blame the patient" game. They deny diagnostic tests that could be beneficial with comments " it wouldn't be feesible to investigate from this stand point any further". My child died because it wasn't feesible to investigate his heart beyond an echo cardiagram. Turns out it wasn't this cute little PFO with left to right shunting. He died because he was of no value to this doctor or the other doctors involved. I hate doctors. I pray that when they need one of their peers to help their children, they run into "gate keepers" just like themselves. God help their children though!CCFE

I am so sorry to hear that last person whom lost their son over these often than not greedy, lazy, professional lying, psych-card playing pieces of utter garbage. I went to have a septoplasty performed, a simple straightening & repairing of the nose, and my life and brething have been a nightmare ever since. This careless butcher collapsed a nasal valve, aggressively did a hatchet job on the other side (talk about a feeling of imbalance), destoryed my nasal turbinates on the side he got shave-happy on(nasal glands which cool & humidify air, creating resistance), and cut some bones too. Not only does my quality of life SUCK, and was much happier WITH my deviated septum- he also literally altered my appearance negatively- my little cousin said I look "different," not wanting to hurt my feelings, but I know. Then, this lazy idiot tries to pawn it all off on the valve collapse-which he caused-, and starts saying how these physical changes were in my head, and I may need to seek a psych. WRONG. Then of course, his worthless peers & colleagues (well aware there's some problems here, yet will NEVER EVER EVER EVER of course badmouth or directly point out the careless mistakes from the work one of their colleagues), will surely charge me lots of money just to look at it when they cannot fix it(due to their "expertise" level)and do nothing. Literally charging me for nothing. Worthless uncaring, lazy morons. It frustrates and upsets me to no end, and that idiot gets to go on making his money, likely hurting others along the way. I also find it pathetically comedic how these ENT (otolarygologst-nose doctors) will sit there and downplay, deny and tell you problems surgically caused in your nose-airway has nothing to do with their surgeries or bad quality work, yet if the results are decent, they will take all the credit in the world for improving your life quality and function. What an F'n JOKE.

I hate doctors because they destroyed my life. They missed a parathyroid tumor for decades that damaged every organ of my body putting me in a state of disability and chronic pain. All because they didn't listen, even with a 20# weight loss while eating at McDonalds every day for a week, they just thought I was anxious. The dumbies didn't even know that weight loss and anxiety means a endocrine tumor. What dumbies! I pray each day that i will die because I can't do any activity without going into pain Unfortunately, being a health care practitioner as well, I see every day how much doctors harm and even kill people, yet they would never admit it. They are total failures! I really think doctors need to get some psychological help so they won't project their mother issues onto patients. Anxiety/Depression are usually signs of endocrine problems you dumbies. You all need be re educated in a country that cares about people. You doctors are too controlled by pharmaceutical/insurance companies and need a brain of your own. They are 20 years more advanced in Europe both in technology and knowledge. I'm sure you'd moderate this one because you don't want people to know the truth! Good luck Americans! You're life is in jeopardy in America. If you want to die, go to an American doctor! Gertrude

Most of the people in here seem to have ridiculous expectations of life...bad things happen, and as long as you allow them to rule your life they will. Best efforts are never bad efforts. I hope the angry here can find peace in themselves because they won't find it anywhere else.

I am a Family Medicine intern. Throughout my years in med school and thus far during internship, I have tried to hold onto my ideals for patient care in the midst of long hours of study and work. Some of the patient stories of medical errors and rude doctors truly saddens me. Still, many of the dismissive comments about primary care physicians as somehow inferior, as implied some postings (particularly from the PhDs, for some reason) is ridiculous. I would expect a PhD to be intelligent enough to realize that it is always easier to sound intelligent when you have less information to cover. For example, a PhD may be the utmost expert in the topic of research and subject of dissertation and sound incredibly intelligent w/ all the focused years of research--but what if one was expected to be the next expert on everyone single PhD's topic of research? The latter is what family physicians strive for. It is not a 200% mastery of every condition and scientific basis for every clinical recommendation in medicine--that would be impossible. Rather it is the ability to listen, to know the pt in a biopsychosocial perspective, to see the big picture, and to think about how various organ systems may interact, to diagnose the most common conditions we see in medical practice. While a specialist has to master one organ system and sees many of the same medical conditions, a family physician has the intellectual challenge of having a mystery pt walk in and tap into the entire breadth of medical knowledge, which if anything, is more intellectually challenging than thinking within the comforts of box, namely a specialty silo. To be called "losers of medical school" by one of the PhDs that posted is not just offensive but absolutely false -- I personally (and many of my FP colleagues) had the grades/scores to become a sub-specialist of much higher paying salary but chose to become primary care physicians b/c of my own ideals that the doctor-patient relationship is key, and that PCPs are sorely needed in our terribly lopsided healthcare system.

Sadly, many of these comments makes some of my ideals barely hang on a thread now. With such hard work, less pay per hour, over 300K in debt, and the utter hatred of the patients here (and colleagues like nurses), how does one manage to stay in the profession anyway? I need a major morale boost.

PLEASE.. PLEASE.. DO NOT WRITE ANY COMMENTS FURTHER TO THIS "I HATE DOCTORS" FIRST CHAPTER. INSTEAD, PLEASE WRITE YOUR COMMENTS TO I Hate Doctors: Chapter 3. FURTHER COMMENTS HERE MAY LEAD TO LOSS OF ALL COMMENTS (A QUIRK IN THE SYSTEM)SO PLEASE.. NO FURTHER COMMENTS HERE. ..Maurice.

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